Tempera on paper, ca. 1960 (one-quarter of 8.5″ x 7″ work)

Do you like children?, W.C. Fields was reportedly asked. “Yes, if they’re properly cooked.” Perhaps he would have enjoyed Flora’s savory recipe. From Grandpa’s Ghost Stories (Atheneum Books, 1978): Next we looked at Mrs. Ghost’s favorite program. It was about cooking and was called Feeding Phantom Faces. It opened with a big, fat-bellied demon in a tall white hat. He hauled in a big iron pot and showed us how to make soup out of…

irk Sillsbee in the “Design 2007” issue of Los Angeles City Beat: “Where the Peanuts gang was congenitally static, Flora’s graphics positively exploded with energy, color, and behavioral abandon. His was often giddy imagery that bordered on visual mayhem. A mopey depressive like Charlie Brown would have no place in Flora’s oeuvre, which was populated with clowns, ecstatics, intoxicants, psychopaths, and exultant maniacs. Flora was the rare graphic artist whose work looked like a two-dimensional…

Untitled, undated (ca. early 1940s) detail from sketchbook UPDATE (August 19): Discovered this draft today in a folder of early 1940s pencil and pen sketches:

This is a print detail of Railroad Town, a 1951 Jim Flora woodcut. What you see above is approximately one-tenth of the entire 11″ x 22.5″ work. The rest is equally outrageous. Barbara and I just returned from Knoxville, where we oversaw proofs for numbered, archival-quality limited edition relief prints of this iconic Flora work. All prints are restruck from the original Flora-cut block, and the edition will be produced by Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress. Prints…

Holly of Sweetheartville, a self-described “bitch kitty on wheels,” finds a vintage Flora cover in—well, you’ll never guess where. She also observes that “covering a dining room wall with record sleeves hung with thumb tacks [is] too college.” Perhaps decoratistas can agree on a Flora exemption. UPDATE (02 MAY 07): Mr. Hall wonders if we’re “making fun of [Mrs. Hall] in some way.” No way!

Jim Flora passed away in 1998, one year after the TV debut of SOUTH PARK. We don’t know if he ever watched it. Yet there is incontrovertible evidence that Flora telepathically transmitted artistic ideas to series creators Matt and Trey. Exhibit A: In the New York Times, March 15, 1959, Flora depicted the stork delivering a litter of South Park denizens: Forty years later, the above figures would have reproduced in sufficient quantities to populate…

Bet your moose can’t toot his own horn! Know why? Three reasons: 1) You didn’t sign him up for lessons;2) Clumsy, cloven hooves—can’t work keys; and,3) He’s not a Floramoose! Detail from December 1942 Columbia-Okeh new release monthly. Complete booklet featured in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

We guess that’s a three-legged dog and we suppose he’s got a bone. That could be the moon peeking through the curl of his tail. But perhaps we’re being overly literal. Detail from an untitled work ca. 1960s. Another detail appears here.

Eloquent, music-skewed review of The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora over at J.B. Spins, a blog devoted to “jazz and improvised politics.”