James (Jim) Flora is
best-known for his wild jazz and classical album covers for Columbia
Records (late 1940s) and RCA Victor (1950s). He
authored and illustrated 17 popular children's books and flourished for decades
as a magazine illustrator. Few realize, however, that Flora (1914-1998) was
also a prolific fine artist with a devilish sense of
humor and a flair for juxtaposing playfulness, absurdity
and violence.
Cute -
and deadly.
Flora's
album covers pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and
shark-fin chins who fingered cockeyed pianos
and honked lollipop-hued horns. Yet this childlike exuberance was subverted by
a tinge of the diabolic. Flora wreaked havoc with
the laws of physics, conjuring flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives.
Taking liberties with human anatomy, he drew bonded bodies
and misshapen heads, while inking ghoulish
skin tints and grafting mutant appendages. He was not averse to
pigmenting jazz legends Benny Goodman and Gene
Krupa like bedspread patterns. On some Flora figures, three
legs and five arms were standard equipment, with spare eyeballs
optional. His rarely seen fine artworks reflect the same comic yet disturbing
qualities. "He was a monster,"
said artist and Floraphile JD King. So were many of his creations.
