The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Flora

The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora
By Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon
Fantagraphics Books

There is something quintessentially American about Jim Flora’s artistic career. Though academically trained in fine art, he excelled in the corporate world, producing commercial art as both a salaried staffer and a consistently in-demand freelancer. In fact, some of his best loved images graced the jackets of Columbia and RCA records, particularly their jazz releases. Irwin Chusid and Barbara Economon have taken on the challenge of cataloguing the known Flora oeuvre and sleuthing out previously unidentified Floriana. Their efforts resulted in three collections of Flora’s slyly humorous and subtly macabre art, including the recently published The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora.

Jazz collectors were indeed early Flora fans, not only for his record label work, but for the syncopated rhythmic sensibility of his intricately composed canvases and woodcuts. Of course, Flora produced work on scores of subjects, like the many scientifically themed illustrations produced during his short stint as art director for the long defunct Research & Engineering journal, many of which are reprinted in Diabolic for the first time since their initial 1950’s publication. While Flora’s art retains its whimsical charm, R&E's accompanying text sounds very much like a product of its time. However, the art he produced for Look Magazine’s “Who Needs Tax Relief Most?” featuring a fanged 1040 monster chasing a taxpayer seems even timelier today than when first published in 1955.

While Flora has always attracted an enthusiastic following, including graphic artists influenced by his work (like J.D. King), 2009 might well be Flora’s breakout year, with AMC’s Mad Men bringing 1950’s Madison Avenue chic back into vogue. After all, it was Flora (along with his imitators) who greatly shaped the style of commercial art throughout the 1950’s. (Also, as 2012 approaches, doomsday cranks might be attracted to his late career acrylic “Quetzlcoatl Returns.”)

Still, many Flora fans will always be most interested in his musical work, so they will be happy to learn Chusid and Economon found more gold to mine in his Columbia files. In Diabolic, they focus on his illustrations for Coda, a predominantly classical newsletter produced for record stores and the Columbia sales reps. At times, Flora’s images echo Dali, creating surreal landscapes where giant violins and conga drums dwarf abstract human figures.

Chusid and Economon once again prove to be wise stewards of the Flora archives. Diabolic reveals many largely unknown aspects of his work, but also fruitfully revisits his classic Columbia-era work. Thanks to the quality of the reproductions and design of the book itself, the vitality of Flora’s art comes through on each page. An effective introduction to Flora’s art and a satisfying crowd-pleaser for his established fans, Diabolic is another richly entertaining treasury of Flora’s “baroque and subversive” art.

Bill Finegan, RIP

This week the Jim Flora online mafia (which I suppose I qualify for membership in) marked the passing of Bill Finegan, an arranger’s arranger and the co-leader of the under-appreciated Sauter-Finegan Orchestra (check out J.D. King and the Jim Flora blog for more information). During its five year run, the band recorded for the RCA labels, which is how Flora’s distinctive art came to grace their covers.

Finegan made a reputation selling arrangements to Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, two bandleaders who were dependent on quality arrangers to maintain their romantic and sentimental sounds. His future partner Eddie Sauter’s resume included work with Benny Goodman and Red Norvo. Together they created a distinctive big band sound, lauded for its aural colors and textures.

After disbanding, Sauter maintained the higher music profile. He is probably best remembered by jazz fans for his work on two classic Stan Getz albums, Focus and the Mickey One soundtrack. Finegan did contribute charts to Holiday with Mulligan, the only recorded collaboration between Gerry Mulligan and vocalist Judy Holiday, before her premature death from cancer. Released almost twenty years after her death, it is an overlooked minor classic, unfairly dismissed by the cynical, because Mulligan and Holiday were involved at the time (no Flora cover though). Bill Finegan 1917-2008.

Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora

Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora
By Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon
Fantagraphics Books tradepaper
978-1-56097-805-3

Alex Kallao’s An Evening At the Embers LP is just okay (it is one of the thousands of sessions recorded by the beloved bassist Milt “the Judge” Hinton), but it is eagerly sought after by record collectors for its distinctive cover art by Jim Flora (website here), renown for his long stints with the Columbia and RCA record labels. While Chusid & Economon’s second collection of Flora’s work has far fewer LP covers than the first, it includes many images that will be of interest to jazz collectors in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

Baroque and subversive, Flora’s art has attracted a cult following. JD King’s forward recaps elements of Flora’s style: “At times we see the cubism of Picasso peeking out, Dali’s dreaminess drifting in, Klee’s linear quality, Miro’s absurdity, and Stuart Davis’s graphic color and shapes.” (p. 31) Chusid trenchantly writes:

“He didn’t simply paint the human face; he admitted to ‘tearing it apart, making it into something grotesque, or something sweet.’ He dismembered bodies, then rewired them like Calder sculptures.” (p. 13)

While there is only a smattering of LP covers included, Sinister has a large section devoted to Flora’s commercial art for Columbia Records that have been almost untirely unseen for years. There are banners, brochures, and point-of-sale materials featuring images of Gene Krupa, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, and Benny Goodman. Of particular historical interest are the promotional booklets Flora mocked-up and sent to Columbia to encourage more promotional efforts for their jazz reissues, which ultimately led to his employment with the label.

Flora had a clear affinity for jazz. Apart from his Columbia and RCA years, he produced images of Count Basie and Fletcher Henderson and a Mardi Gras inspired series. Illustrations like that for Marguerite Young’s short story “The Great Juke,” published in the October 1947 issue of Mademoiselle makes one curious to read the accompanying prose. There are even images of political interest, like those for “The Welfare State is Here to Stay” from Look magazine and “The FCC’s Expanding, Demanding Universe” for Fortune, which illustrate the growth of the government leviathan.

Chusid, the “public editor” of Donald Luskin’s Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid blog, writes with wit and authority. Together with Economon, he has assembled a striking collection of Flora’s art that most record collectors will flip over. They also maintain a Jim Flora blog, where you can find regularly updated Flora images and commentary.