Jim Flora Art LLC has listed on eBay a vintage hand-colored relief print of a 1954 Flora woodcut entitled Manhattan. The print was color-filled (with either tempera or watercolor), signed, titled, and matted by the artist. The cityscape depicts many NYC landmarks, such as the Empire State Building, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the UN, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, famous theaters and legendary musical bistros, Washington Square arch, a NY public library lion, subways,…

Untitled, undated pencil drawing on onionskin paper; later printed in Gup, a 1942 chapbook authored by Robert Lowry, issued by Little Man Press (Cincinnati), featuring cover and interior illustrations by Flora.

To sustain the classic Flora LP tradition of the 1940s and ’50s, I’ve long advocated restoring his art to record album covers. Aside from one or two knockoffs of existing Flora designs, the first new release to adapt Flora non-LP art was Do This! by Seattle’s Reptet, in 2006. The cover for the forthcoming Raymond Scott Quintet CD Ectoplasm (scheduled for February 2008 US release) was completed last May. Now comes the Quartet San Francisco’s…

Untitled pen & ink sketch, ca. 1940. I detect the influence of Daniel Johnston. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Never mind.

Barbara and I will be curating the first Jim Flora art exhibit since—well, since the artist’s memorial service in 1998. The exhibit, named after our second book, “The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora,” takes place at the Fantagraphics Bookstore/Gallery. The exhibit will run from September 22 through October 24. The Florafest will include original paintings, fine art prints, woodcut relief prints, record covers, music ephemera, and Little Man Press artifacts. There will also be…

Or perhaps she’s just contented. Early pencil sketch, ca. 1940. There are a number of pencil and pen sketches in the archives which evolved through stages into paintings. This, so far as we know, isn’t one.

untitled, undated pen and ink, ca. 1940

D.B. Dowd (Professor of Visual Communication, Washington University, St.Louis) opines: The modernist drive to split representation from its subject (that is, to open up a space between them, at the very least) included the ransacking of pre-modern art historical conventions, often to excellent effect. Jim Flora’s 1945 Coda cover draws on spot color printing and the use of spatial registers, a la Egyptian art, to deliver a strong graphic narrative with clarity and visual independence…

A new limited edition, archival-quality, large-scale fine art print of Jim Flora’s late-1950s tempera 63rd Street is now on eBay for a 10-day auction. An edition of ten has been produced by Flora historian/archivist Barbara Economon. The print now listed (10/10) is the only copy from the edition that will be auctioned in 2007, and the sale price of remaining prints will be higher than the winning bid. If you’ve got questions about the edition,…

The August issue of Juxtapoz magazine includes a feature article on Jim Flora, written by someone named Irwin Chusid (who denies responsibility for the article’s poorly constructed sentences, mangled syntax, bad grammar, and blown punchlines; to quote Erich von Stroheim, it was edited by “someone who had nothing on his mind but his hat”). Regardless of the feature’s narrative flaws, the Flora works reproduced therein are magnificent, and include the late 1940s painting The Rape…