Party Animals

Detail of untitled 1940s tempera casually referred to as "Tenement K," which contains quite a few enigmatic and disturbing tenants. The original work is owned by Keith McAllister, who extracted the above celebratory duo to produce a holiday card titled "Party Animals." No better way to ring in seasonal festivities than a curiously sinister Flora tableau.

Tenement K

Today we introduce a new limited edition fine art print called TENEMENT K, whose residents are bawdy, musical, criminal, and/or exhibitionistic. Doesn't matter if you're rowdy, serpentine, or headless—the landlord will rent you a room. If you were a mutant miscreant, you'd be home by now.

The previously unpublished and uncirculated work, which dates from the 1940s, is owned by a private collector who allowed us to have the work professionally photographed for print reproduction. Although the work is untitled, we have provisionally named it Tenement K to differentiate it from other untitled Jim Flora works.

Only forty (40) prints of Tenement K were produced for this edition. Each archival-quality 22" x 17" print is hand-numbered in the lower right and authenticated on the reverse with the stamped seal of Jim Flora Art (a Flora family enterprise). The provisional title does not appear in the print markings.

The launch price is $175.00 each (+ shipping and handling). Prices will increase as the edition sells down. Full print specs are included on the Tenement K page at JimFlora.com.

rush hour

Commercial spot illustration, 1961, magazine and subject unknown. Pen & ink, watercolor and Liquid Paper on artist board with printer's markings. Time-traveler Buster Keaton found himself in a similar predicament in the legendary Twilight Zone episode "Once Upon a Time," which aired the same year.

road rage (1958)

The miserable family road trip. Commercial spot illustration, 1958, magazine and subject unknown. Pen & ink and watercolor on artist board. Three additional thematically unrelated spot illos were arrayed on the board.

Self-Portrait with Cigar

Pen & ink on heavy stock, 1990s, from the archives.
Previously unpublished and uncirculated work.

artist at rest

Today in 1914, James Royer Flora was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio. Above our guy is pictured relaxing at home in the late 1980s. Interesting juxtaposition of bold patterns, with hunting jacket, slacks and chair vying for focal primacy. Cameo in the upper right by the Fab Four, depicted in 1964, tho it appears to be a hand-rendered (probably not by Flora) replica of a famous photo.

Flora's daughter Julia provides some family context:

I love this picture; this is exactly the way I'll always remember him, with that great head of hair and his flair (?) for mixing plaids (we used to tease him about that all the time). I'm fairly sure it was my brother Robert that took it and probably for some kind of promo shot Dad asked him to create.

In the early 1970s, Flora rendered an autobiographical montage, The First Five Years, in acrylic on wood. The work featured six stacked tiers depicting incidents during the artist's childhood. We posted one tier in December 2008. Here's another:

spill in the gulf region

In 1956, Flora mocked up a proposed illustrated series about his fascination with Mexico. The storyboard, entitled Footloose in Mexico, consisted of vignettes drawn from his residency and travels south of the border. On the back of the heavy artist's board draft was handwritten, "Sketches for a magazine that never got off the ground." The identity of the failed periodical is unknown. No descriptive copy was included, just dummy lines for text placement; hence, the significance of figures such as the above are left to the imagination.

The images have never before been published or circulated. We'll post more details of the draft work in the future

Murderpie

Flora woodcut print reproduced in Murderpie, a chapbook written by Robert Lowry, published by their struggling Little Man Press, Cincinnati, 1939. Many Little Man publications featured bizarre, meticulous cuts by Flora, but none of the original blocks are known to exist. This is one of the few extant signed LMP-era prints.

From Lowry's text:

I WILL HAVE TO BAM THEM NOW, he said.

He began to push them down with his two hands. He pushed them all down to the floor. He pushed them down with his two hands. Some little squashy ones he shook. He shook big greasy ones with moonbeam smiles. His little knife was gone because no one was left to care whether anyone was alive or anything. The whole room was packed full of bones and shanks and broken wishbones. And some of the blood and gore was trying to get away out of the door. He closed up everything.

The Stationmaster's Daughter

The full title of this undated (early- to mid-1940s) work is The Rape of the Stationmaster's Daughter, a tempera on paper, titled in pencil on the reverse. It was reproduced in our second Flora anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, and its anatomically absurd actors were adapted by designer Laura Lindgren for the cover. In 2008 we issued a fine art print.

A customer purchased a print last month and expressed admiration at the quality of both the work and the replica. But truth to tell, our Stationmaster print has not sold well. I suspect the subject matter creeps people out. It's sinister and diabolic—and goes beyond mere mischief. Who wants a cartoonish depiction of a sexual-assault-in-progress adorning the living room?

Yet this work will always be special to me. At the time Barbara Economon and I compiled our first book, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, in 2004, we had seen very little of Flora's early fine art. He was primarily known for his album covers and commercial music iconography, topical magazine illustrations, and children's books. What fine art of Flora's we had seen consisted mostly of his large, late-period maritime canvases, which did not capture our interest.

When I was first shown (by Flora's family) his fine art collection in storage on a rainy Saturday in October 2005, one of the first works pulled from a jammed portfolio was Stationmaster. I ogled it with amazement. It was gorgeous, even as it was disturbing. It was a depiction of evil, yet it had a magical quality, transporting me to another world, revealing the deeper Flora artistic vision that had been a family heirloom to that point. I didn't see darkness in the tableau. The aged, pigment-soaked paper evoked the privately creative side of Flora during the 1940s. I never forgot that moment: the birth of an obsession.

We don't know if the work was based on a historical incident or simply reflects Flora exorcising his demons with a paint brush. Barbara's color-matched print faithfully captures the original, right down to the muddy backwash. You can almost feel the brushstrokes.

a curiously sinister lachrymosity

Detail, Okeh Records retail banner for then-new (1943) 78 rpm disc "Born To Lose" by Ted Daffan's Texans. The grieving beau has an odd tic: crying out of one eye, thereby expressing semi-sorrow over the loss of his gal.

The full banner was reproduced in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

crimestoppers

Great detail (extracted at the Print & Pattern blog) from Flora's mid-1960s painting The Big Bank Robbery. We issued a limited edition fine art print of the work earlier this year.

The backstory on the work is unknown. It may be a generic bank hold-up, or based on a specific historic incident. No documentation from the artist is known to exist.

the old brawl game

The title and date of this 1960s commercial tempera illustration are unknown, as is the periodical for which it was assigned (possibly LIFE or LOOK magazine). The mise-en-scène depicts historic incidents and major league baseball players associated with Busch Stadium (a.k.a. Sportsman's Park), home of two St. Louis baseball teams: the luckless Browns (1902-53) and the perennially contending Cardinals (1920-66). The ballpark was replaced by Busch Memorial Stadium in 1966, an event which this illustration probably commemorates. (The Browns franchise moved east in 1954 to become the Baltimore Orioles.)

The detail above represents about one-third of the full 16-1/4" x 16-3/4" work, which is stored in the Flora family archives.

arts & Kraft

In an art class called "Soft Sculpture" at the University of Washington (Seattle), students were instructed to transform a favorite painting into food sculpture. SunShine McWane adapted Flora's untitled 1950-51 tempera we casually refer to as "Gunfight on the Roof" (original work below). The resulting mixed-media delicacy, entitled "Cheese City," was completed in January 2009.

The materials—ingredients, actually—used by McWane include cheese (cheddar, Swiss, Colby, jalapeño jack), acrylic paint, plastic (GI Joe figures), one wire twist-tie, and a Gummi Bear. The work is currently in SunShine's apartment, at room temperature, preserved with spray fixative. Its lifespan is uncertain.

The original painting was reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora and released as a limited edition fine art print in 2008.

Thanks to Jillian Sutton for introducing McWane to Flora's work and for alerting us to the cheesy replica.

gratuitous violence

Because we feel like it. Because cartoon violence is the best violence of all!

Cover detail, Columbia Coda, June-July 1943. The above is not a garden variety mugging—it has to do with highbrow musical theatrics. The dagger to the heart caused the victim to sing—and thereafter to be written out of the plot. Although it's possible he returned in later acts as a zombie.

those self-destructive types

Illustration, Parade magazine, January 18, 1959. Article about people with genetic and/or psychological dispositions to behavioral patterns that cause health problems. The above tableau (from a tearsheet in the Flora archives) appears on page 9 beneath the semi-title " ... Disease Personality." We're missing page 8, which would provide the rest of the title.

The Big Bank Robbery (edition)

Just released: a new Flora fine art print. The Big Bank Robbery (edition of 30) was reproduced from an undated tempera on board that reflects the nuances of Flora's mid-1960s style. (The title was handwritten on the reverse.) The three-tiered tableau depicts colorful Flora mayhem: inscrutable monsters with misshapen features, Lego architecture, bug-eyed buildings, gumdrop color fills, and—yes—a bank robbery.

how to improve your bottom line

Spot illustration, Columbia Coda, December 1945

female trouble

We're not sure what this commercial illustration (ca. 1960) was intended to depict, because we don't know the nature of the assignment or the client. Rather than impose a narrative, click on thumbnail to view enlarged image, create your own storyline, and post it in the Comments. If you happen to have a magazine tearsheet of this illo, please advise so we can settle all arguments before things get out of hand (which is, actually, what the scene above depicts).

Update: Mystery solved: see comment #5. Source: Parade magazine, May 25, 1958.

now you see it ...

There are presently twenty different page headers at JimFlora.com. Each time you visit the site or refresh the page, the image changes. Because they rotate at random, some images will recur multiple times before you see them all. It's a Zen exercise. Mixes well with rum.

There's also nine footers at the bottom of the homepage.

food chain 1

Detail, Grandpa's Ghost Stories (Atheneum Books, 1978). Yes, this little mise en scène is from a lighthearted book for young readers. Fun for the whole family! Bone apetit!