Filed Under: "commercial illustrations"

“The Great U.S. Freight Cartel” (detail), Fortune magazine, January 1957. The full original 14″ x 5-1/2″ tempera work was preserved by the artist and is stored—in great condition–in the Flora archives. It’s one of the earliest extant original commercial illustrations in the collection. Of the hundreds of works-for-hire rendered by Flora for dozens of magazines during the 1940s and early 1950s, all that remain are periodical reproductions. From the late 1950s on, a sizable number…

Untitled tempera illustration for unknown magazine, March 1958. Stamped on reverse: “kill” — which doesn’t refer to the dragon or the knight-in-a-necktie. It refers to the drawing, which was rejected for unknown reasons. An earlier throwdown:

Illustration detail, “Long Day’s Journey Into the Insomniac’s Night”New York Times Magazine, October 1, 1967

REACH! Heck, it’s only pretend gunplay. Detail, Primer for Prophets booklet, commissioned by CBS-TV, 1954.

NOW AVAILABLE: the next four works in the Primer for Prophets screen print series. Cool Flora illustrations of the American nuclear family (and their weird pets) during the 1950s, when donuts and cake were considered essential nutrients, little girls could multi-task with brushes, and dogs craved beer! The images derive from a 1954 trade-only alphabet booklet that Flora illustrated for CBS-TV. The second set of prints features KISSED, COOKED, GROOMED, and QUAFFED. Edition of 100…

Detail, Green Mansions resort brochure, 1947Full work reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora

The Newspaper Archive offers a massive online database of regional papers. It claims to have archived 895 million articles published in 747 cities over 240 years. In case you’ve run out of things to read on the web, here’s a bottomless library. I bought a ten-day pass to search for Jim Flora illustrations. Easy, right? Well, yes and no. NA’s search engine uses OCR to find word strings in old newsprint that’s been erratically scanned….

Section art, 29th Annual of Advertising and Editorial ArtThe Art Directors Club of New York, 1950

It’s been a long time comin’ here in Minnesota — at last I can milk the cow, play some records and mow the lawn! Ah, yes — but it still drizzles. Hence the umbrella. And cigar. Saturday Evening Post advertising promotional booklet, 1955.

Detail, “Ohio,” illustration for Container Corporation of America Fortune magazine, 1947