Colorblind but Full of Color and Not Blind at All

The American holiday of eating and shopping for nonsense being over, I can now get back to the original program and write on in my way about those things that occupy my idle time.  After the Muppets film last week, I popped into the Dorian Grey Gallery formerly occupied by Giant Robot in the east village to see the show on the illustrator/artist Jim Flora.  Now, his name may not be as well known, but for collectors of jazz on vinyl and those with an interest in retro graphic design, he has been on the periphery of vision as has been the case for me.

Alas, in my many years of collecting records, I have never come across any of the discs that bear his unmistakable drawings on the cover.  One had to suffice with the three volume of books featuring his work, of whose author is the curator of this exhibition.

While there, the gallery representative told us some good tidbits- after some of my usual hundred questions that I ask whenever I am interested in something.  It turns out that his Estate (Mr. Flora having passed away several years ago) wants to clear his Estate, for probably the usual reason$ and general lack of interest- although one piece I was interested in was not for sale (which I found depicted the first five years of his life).   But selling things off in general comes as no surprise, of course, but what was is finding out the Mr. Flora was colorblind.  Now, looking at his work, which is often an explosion of very contained and "colorful" color, it does not look it at all.  In fact, it is often those who are not colorblind in art who are not only incompetent in the use of color but in general aesthetically blind as well.  If one needs a case in point, one can go into any museum (and it need not only be in contemporary art, which is a given, but also modern art which may also be a given depending on one's preference, and also in the pre-modern).

Anyway, there are so many works on display at the Jim Flora show that I have to go back there on some repeat visits- to look closer at them, for each one of them is a map of joy and fun.