Filed Under: "paintings"

untitled tempera on paper, ca. 1960s

One of many—a recurring Flora motif. There’s something jazz-like about these images, as if the artist were jamming on a canvas, creating rhythmic design. This untitled 10 x 8 tempera, discovered in a sketchbook, dates from the early to mid-1960s. There are dozens of sketchbooks in the collection, spanning the early 1940s to the month of Flora’s death in July 1998. Aside from pen and pencil project drafts, the books contain numerous fully rendered (and…

Flora did some mind-bending works in the 1990s — more curiously sinister than his work in the 1980s (IMHO). Quetzlcoatl [sic] Returns is an acrylic on stretched canvas (15″ x 30″) rendered within a year of the artist’s death. Flora, who lived in Mexico in 1950-1951, was a longtime enthusiast of Latin American folkways.

Detail, untitled holiday painting, ca. 1951. These stemware sophisticates also appear on a t-shirt Sketch, ca. 1951, featuring a draft of the celebratory duo

Self-Portrait, tempera on paper, ca. mid- to late-1940s. Update OCT 2008: Now available as a limited edition fine art print.

untitled modular tempera, ca. 1960s

Detail from untitled painting, ca. 1960sAnother detail appears here

Detail, Grand Opening Migraine, a.k.a., Behind the Green Door (both titles penciled on reverse)painting, ca. 1974

Detail, Baltimore, tempera on paper, ca. mid-1960s

Detail, Mardi Gras figure studies ca. early 1950s, tempera on paper Sketches, full study, and completed color seriesincluded in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim 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…

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…