Filed Under: "bad behavior"

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.

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 The previously unpublished and uncirculated work, which dates from the 1940s, is owned by a private collector who allowed us to have the work professionally photographed for print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….

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.

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.

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 Previously unpublished and uncirculated work.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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 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…