Filed Under: "Floraphiles"

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…

Fantagraphics Books Art Director Jacob McCovey writes: Flora is jaw-dropping to the point of being a spokesman for TMD, not to mention Bipolar Disorder. The entire tsunami of illustrators/designers making a new-wave career producing rock posters should be paying alms to the descendants of the man who made album design such an emotional experience.

rnie (not Bert!) writes: “the important part here is the artist. I’d never heard of him, but his work is pretty well known in certain circles.”

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…

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!

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.”

Artist Ward Jenkins reviews The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora at his Ward-O-Matic blog. Our friend Ward had previously posted about Flora’s 1957 kiddie caper, The Day The Cow Sneezed, showcasing some rarely seen draft illustrations.