The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora [Paperback]

Irwin Chusid (Author), Jim Flora (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2004

The first retrospective of one of the defining visual stylists of the 1950s.

Vintage music buffs have long been bedazzled by bizarre, cartoonish album covers tagged with the signature "Flora." In the 1940s and '50s, James (Jim) Flora designed dozens of diabolic cover illustrations, many for Columbia and RCA Victor jazz artists. His designs pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins, who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. In the background, geometric doo-dads floated willy-nilly like a kindergarten toy room gone anti-gravitational. He wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring up flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives. Yet Flora's wondrous, childlike exuberance was subverted by a sinister tinge of the grotesque. As Flora confessed in a 1998 interview, "I got away with murder, didn't I?"

This is the first collection of the marvelous, mischievous album art of Jim Flora (1914-1998). The book contains most of Flora's known covers (around 50), which command high prices on eBay. The gallery includes rarely seen illustrations and covers from Columbia's new release monthly, "Coda" (1943-1953), and some of Flora's post-WWII commercial magazine work. The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora also presents the first reprinting of Flora's fabled Little Man Press work (1939-1942). LMP was a small publishing imprint started by literary nutjob Robert Lowry, who recruited Flora as his graphic co-conspirator. Their LMP editions were printed at home in small runs of 125 to 400 copies. These books served as artistic rites of exorcism for Flora, as the budding illustrator's images veered from childish whimsy to disturbing freakishness. The book encapsulates Flora's life with a biographical profile, interviews, photos, autobiographical reminiscences, and tributes from Alex Steinweiss, Gene Deitch, Shag, R.O. Blechman, Tim Biskup, and others who knew Jim and/or were influenced by him. Full-color and black-and-white illustrations throughout

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Old-LP collectors, in particular, are in for a shock of recognition when they open this almost-LP-jacket-sized album: "Hey, this is the guy!" Right, Jim Flora (1914-98) is the guy, the one who made those astonishingly energetic early LP cartoon-art covers, on which, for instance, jazzmen were playing so hot that their bodies flew apart like unstrung marionettes or, at the other extreme, melted together (apparently not altogether pleasantly: look at those bristling teeth on Inside Sauter-Finnegan). A drawer from childhood on, Flora turned to commercial art after giving up, for financial reasons, an architecture scholarship. He forged his distinctive style as the artist for a little magazine that he and another literarily inclined student put out on a shoestring. Cubism, Miro, Klee, and, especially after a year and a half in Mexico at midcentury, the great muralists Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, influenced Flora; a further great Mexican, Covarrubias, who did a lot of commercial art himself, shows in the poses and contours of Flora's figures. Flora characteristically used four or fewer colors--bright, even pastels that, with the sharpness of his line, make his drawings suggest linocuts. His work virtually always provokes a smile, and pop-culture preservationist-revivalist Chusid accompanies a tidy gallery of it with his own and others' writing about and interviews with Flora. And mirabile dictu, the book seems to be typo free! Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Irwin Chusid, based in Hoboken, NJ, is a journalist, music historian, radio personality and self-described “landmark preservationist” who has salvaged the careers pf previously overlooked but now-celebrated icons as composer/bandleader/electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, Space Age Pop avatar Esquivel, the Langley Schools Music Project, and Jim Flora. Since 1975, Chusid has been a DJ on free-form radio station WFMU in New Jersey. A radio personality since 1975, he is the author of Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music. He has produced landmark reissues of the music of Raymond Scott, Esquivel, and the Langley Schools Music Project.


Jim Flora was born in 1914 in Ohio and passed away in 1998 in Connecticut.

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (October 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560976004
• ISBN-13: 978-1560976004
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 10 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,198,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historical and Artistic Necessity, November 29, 2004

By 

Jacob K. Covey "Unflowner" (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (Paperback)

Full Disclosure: I am Art Director for the publisher, although this book was completed before I arrived. That said, this is an incredible and much-needed look into the work of one of the artists that defined the concept of record cover art. A darkly fanciful artist with explosive vision, Flora worked alongside Alex Steinweiss to conceive of what album art should be. There is no way to overstate how important his work is (then and now) and what a shame it is that it took so long to give him his due. Less restrained-in fact, more exuberant-than the revered Blue Note covers, Flora's art put a different face on jazz and classical. One just as accurate but with uninhibited joy in a shadowy world. If you enjoy the likes of the modern low-brow masters (most notably Tim Biskup) you must own this. If you want history on record cover art (which is painfully lacking on the bookshelves), you want an inspiring coffeetable read, or just want to look all hipper-than-thou, then buy it. Fantagraphics has made a beautiful collection in this book.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Popped my eyes out!, December 2, 2004

By 

Maria Reidelbach (Downtown New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (Paperback)

This book is a terrific introduction and overview of the beautiful, grotesque, familiar and yet shockingly fresh work of Jim Flora. It's pure eye candy, Flora's limited color palette illustrations are brilliantly reproduced in large scale. Essays by Irwin Chusid and others are both witty and informative. You'll come away from this book inspired and giddy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Picasso Meets the Original Hipsters Meets Some Joyful German-Polynesian Expressionist Woodblock Engraver, March 14, 2011

By 

Theseus "theseus" (US of A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (Paperback)

Click on the "look inside this book" and the images speak for themselves -- jubilant, creepy, manic, economical. This is illustration of the first order: it captures a specific time and place and yet is so idiosyncratic and sure of itself that it transcends commercial illustration and enters the realm of high art.

This, the first book on Flora, is probably the most essential, containing the Columbia and RCA album covers as well as Flora's work for the Little Man Press.

The text is intelligent featuring assessment of the work, reminiscences, and stories from Flora (who died in the late 1990's.)

With an Album Cover Discography, Bibliography and Illustration Vita, and Vintage Album Cover Bibliography.