Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora (Paperback)

~ Jim Flora (Author), Irwin Chusid (Author)
Key Phrases: illustration board, Park East, Columbia Records, The Little Man Press (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (2004) was some book, but it was supposed to be a one-shot deal. Then in 2005 the late commercial artist's family opened its stash--enough good stuff, Chusid imparts, for three more books. The first of those three draws primarily from what Chusid thinks is Flora's best period, the 1940s to the early 1960s, during which he put more wildness and violence into his work than he would allow in his later children's books and mainstream-magazine work. Since Flora's style is cartoonishly hieratic, there's nothing grim on view (well, maybe the Ben-Shahn-agit-propish "The Jealous Husband"); it's just that the pictures' extremely high spirits--whatever else they're doing, the figures in them seem to be jitterbugging--sometimes include a little mayhem. Besides more of Flora's Columbia Records, early magazine, and small-press work, this book includes 35 pages of previously unpublished sketches and completed pieces. Everything attests Flora's affinities to Picasso, Klee, Stuart Davis, the Mexican muralists, and especially Calder and Miro. Real smiley stuff. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description

A new collection of eye-popping rarities from a defining visual stylist of the 1950s jazz era. The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, following hot on the heels of 2004's The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (which sold out within a matter of months, but which is being reprinted with this latest volume of Floriana) features a wide array of both his commercial work for prestigious record labels of the '40s and rare, personal work that he did solely for himself.

Flora was prolific in his commercial work; he created art privately in equal measure and often with more fiendish pleasure. His style is cartoonish, evoking childhood nostalgia and dereliction of adult responsibility. There are clowns and kitty cats, grinning faces and beaming suns. But Flora did not restrain his darker impulses. His montages are crammed with bullets and knives and fang-baring snakes. Muggers run amok, demons frolic with rouged harlots, and Flora's characters suffer that is, are afflicted by the artist with severe disfigurement. The banal and the violent often coexist within inches of each other on the canvas. Figures from his burlesque-tinged absurdity "The Rape of the Stationmaster's Daughter" adorn the book cover.

There is also a wealth of 1940s Columbia Records printed matter exhibiting Flora's visual pranks; 1950s RCA Victor-era work; magazine illos, sketchbooks, and prints; 1930s Little Man Press-era drawings; paintings from all decades; photos, and personal keepsakes. All are abundantly represented in The Curiously Sinister Art. Flora's early 1940s musician portraits in Columbia bulletins are raucous and undignified, featuring piss-takes on such legends as Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and Gene Krupa. Flora once said he "could not do likenesses"so he conjured outlandish caricatures. His exotic fauna defy logic and the laws of physics. We suspect he often leaned back from the drafting table, examined his work, and issued a macabre chuckle.

Much of the work in the book is light-hearted it's not all Flora 'rassling his demons. But even in his impish renderings, there's something vaguely unsettling in the nuances. His comic grotesqueries echoed, and in many cases foreshadowed, the 1950s Harvey Kurtzman-era MAD magazine, as well as the underground comix of the late 1960s.

When Flora died in 1998, his family gathered his artistic estate and secured it in a storage facility. In late 2005, the heirs allowed Chusid and Economon access to the vault. What they discovered were "lost works""lost" because fans of Flora's LP covers, kid-lit, and Mischievous Art offerings have never seen most of these eye-boggling treasures, which include paintings, watercolors, sketches, woodcuts and all manner of artistic genius.

Flora once said that all he wanted to do was "create a little piece of excitement." He overshot his goal with many of these works. .

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Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (January 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560978058
• ISBN-13: 978-1560978053
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 9.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #220,960 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational., April 10, 2008

By	Mogadoh (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews

I opted to but this book over the first Jim Flora collection because (from what i saw from descriptions and reviews) it had a rounder, overall look at Jim Flora's work.
I was NOT disappointed this is a fabulous collection of Flora's bizarre strangely unexplainable style of art. It is refreshing to see such originality & art from a time (40s/50s mainly but right up to the 90's) that I'm imagine was much, much less swamped with every man and his dog thinking they are the next Top Artist (tm), but rather people with genuine stand alone talent being given more or less freedom to just do their thing.

I haven't had a major look through (but a good look through) but it seems that this book is compiled with a lot of rare magazine covers, personal drawings etc. with a limited selection of his actual album cover art (after all that was what the first book The Mischievous Art of.. was for, and one i shall definitely have to get).

It's funny because the art on the cover is of what some might suggest is not prime book-cover subject matter (you'll have to buy the book to find out what it is called ;). But a lot of Flora's work is so out-there & fairly unrecognizable (in a good way) that it makes you think.

It's a worthy purchase. And if what the compilers of the book keep their promise then there are more volumes to come. Bring them on on I say.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Mischievous, May 13, 2007

By	Arroyo (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This book goes beyond the first Flora book, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. It's wilder, and has a lot of bizarre fine art works by Flora that have not been shown in public. His album covers (featured in the first book) were fun but mild-mannered compared to the reckless abandon on display in The Curiously Sinister Art. It's hard to believe that Flora is the same guy who created so many cuddly children's books in the 1960s and 1970s. The Curiously Sinister book is definitely for ADULTS, or perhaps for overgrown children with a wicked sense of humor.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The curiously fine sinister Art of Jim Flora, May 12, 2007

By	Pascal (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

Not as instructive as the first one, but a very fine book for people who like the wickedly funny and different art of Jim Flora