David Levine
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist and illustrator best known for his caricatures in The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. Jules Feiffer
Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...
has called him "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th Century".
Early life and education
Levine was born in Brooklyn, where his father Harry ran a small clothing factory. His mother, Lena, was a nurse and political activist who had Communist sympathies. He began to draw as a child, displaying a precocious talent that, at the age of nine, won him an invitation to audition for an animator's position in Disney's Los Angeles Studios.Levine later studied painting at Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
, at Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
's Tyler School of Art
Tyler School of Art
The Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, usually just referred to as Tyler School of Art is Temple University's school of art, which confers BFA and MFA degrees. The school was originally founded by sculptors Stella Elkins Tyler and Boris Blai on a separate 14-acre estate in Elkins Park...
in Philadelphia in 1946, and with Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...
. Immediately following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Levine served in the U. S. Army. After his service, he graduated from Temple with a degree in education and completed his studies at its Tyler School.
Career
Levine initially hoped to be a full-time painter, but was often forced to subsist on illustration work from publications like Gasoline Retailer. Nevertheless, he turned out a body of paintings, although many of these were destroyed in a fire in 1968. Levine's paintings are mostly watercolors that often depict garment workers, honoring his father’s employees, and bathers at Coney IslandConey Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
. The paintings, in contrast to his illustrations, are "sympathetic portraits of ordinary citizens, fond and respectful renderings of the distinctive seaside architecture, panoramas with people on the beach." Levine, together with Aaron Shikler
Aaron Shikler
Aaron Shikler is an American artist noted for portraits of American statesmen and celebrities like Jane Engelhard and Sister Parish....
founded the Painting Group in 1958, a salon of artists with whom he gathered for fifty years to paint models. The group was the subject of a 2007 documentary called Portraits of a Lady, which followed their creation of simultaneous portraits of U. S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
A job at Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
in the early 1960s saw Levine develop his skills as a political illustrator. His first work for The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
appeared in 1963, just a few months after the paper was founded. Subsequently, he drew more than 3,800 pen-and-ink caricatures of famous writers, artists and politicians for the publication. Levine would review a draft of the article to be illustrated, together with photos or other images sent by the staff of the Review. Within a few days, he would return a finished drawing that caught "a large fact about his subject's character"; "his brilliance lay in weaving [the article's] ideas with his own". Only about half of Levine's caricatures were created for the Review. Other work has appeared in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
(over 1,000 drawings), The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Rolling Stone Magazine, Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, New York Magazine, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, and others. As a caricaturist for these publications, Levine distinguished his process from that of political cartoonists: "I could take time to really look it over and think about it, read the articles and so on. The political cartoonists don't get a chance. The headlines are saying this and this about so-and-so, and you have to come up with something which is approved by an editor. I almost never had to get an approval. In forty years I may have run into a disagreement with The New York Review maybe two times.
Levine's work has been exhibited extensively in galleries and museums around the world, and several collections of his paintings and drawings have been published by the Review and elsewhere. In 2008, he published a book, American Presidents, featuring his drawings of U.S. Presidents over five decades, which was also the basis for an exhibit at the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
.
Reputation
John UpdikeJohn Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, whom Levine drew many times, wrote in the 1970s: "Besides offering us the delight of recognition, his drawings comfort us, in an exacerbated and potentially desperate age, with the sense of a watching presence, an eye informed by an intelligence that has not panicked, a comic art ready to encapsulate the latest apparitions of publicity as well as those historical devils who haunt our unease. Levine is one of America's assets. In a confusing time, he bears witness. In a shoddy time, he does good work."
The New York Times described Levine's illustrations as "macro-headed, somberly expressive, astringently probing and hardly ever flattering caricatures of intellectuals and athletes, politicians and potentates" that were "heavy in shadows cast by outsize noses on enormous, eccentrically shaped heads, and replete with exaggeratedly bad haircuts, 5 o’clock shadows, ill-conceived mustaches and other grooming foibles ... to make the famous seem peculiar-looking in order to take them down a peg". The paper commented: "His work was not only witty but serious, not only biting but deeply informed, and artful in a painterly sense as well as a literate one." Levine drew his most frequent subject, former president Richard M. Nixon, 66 times, depicting him as, among other things, the Godfather, Captain Queeg
Captain Queeg
Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, USN, is a fictional character in Herman Wouk's 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny. He is also a character in the identically titled 1954 film adaptation of the novel and in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, the Broadway theatre adaptation of the novel that opened...
, and a fetus.
According to Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, "Levine put together a facebook of human history ... the durability of those Levine depicted, plus the unique insight with which he drew them, guarantees the immortality of his works". Levine's work, taken as a whole, had a leftwing bent, and he claimed still to be a Communist, although people of all political persuasions came in for the same acid treatment in Levine's caricatures. Levine said that "by making the powerful funny-looking ... he might encourage some humility or self-awareness". Levine also described his purpose as follows: "Caricature is a form of hopeful statement: I'm drawing this critical look at what you're doing, and I hope that you will learn something from what I'm doing."
Last years and death
In 2006, Levine was diagnosed with macular degenerationMacular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration is a medical condition which usually affects older adults and results in a loss of vision in the center of the visual field because of damage to the retina. It occurs in “dry” and “wet” forms. It is a major cause of blindness and visual impairment in older adults...
, an eye disease that leads to blindness. While the Review continued to run Levine's older work, no new work appeared there after April 2007.
On December 29, 2009, Levine died at New York Presbyterian Hospital at the age of 83. His death was caused by prostate cancer
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
and a number of subsequent illnesses. He was survived by his second wife, Kathy Hayes (whom he married in 1996), two children, Matthew and Eve, two stepchildren, Nancy and Christopher Rommelmann and grandchildren.