Artist Jim Flora was prolific in his commercial work, but 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. This collection features both his commercial work for prestigious record labels of the '40s, and rare, personal work he did solely for himself. It includes 1940s Columbia Records printed matter with 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. The 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. Much of the work is light-hearted, but there's something vaguely unsettling in the nuances, and his comic grotesqueries echoed, and even foreshadowed, the 1950s Kurtzman-era MAD magazine and the underground comix of the '60s.

Dimensions: 12" x 10" (inches)
Pages: 180
Edition: Softcover
Languages: English
ISBN: 9781560978053