David Levine by David Levine
The Brooklyn Eagle reports that Brooklyn Heights resident David Levine, known for his caricatures published in the New York Review of Books, died today at age 83. The cause of death was prostate cancer and macular degeneration, the report says.
Brooklyn Eagle: Levine, 83, was also well-known as the leader of an informal “breakfast club” that has met, and still meets, for about 25 years at Teresa’s Restaurant on Montague Street. He also played tennis at the Heights Casino, and his caricatures once hung on the walls of a now-closed restaurant on Montague Street.
John Updike, who was often the subject of the artist’s caricatures, wrote of Levine:
“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. Here he is.”
A full gallery of Mr. Levine’s work is available at the New York Review of Books website or at the artist’s official website.
