RIP: Famed Caricaturist and Illustrator David Levine Dies at 83

David Levine, an illustrator known for his snarky, often political caricatures in The New York Review of Books, died on Tuesday morning at the age of 83. According to his New York Times obit, Levine’s 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.” It goes on to call him “the heir of the 19th-century masters of the illustration, Honoré Daumier and Thomas Nast.” While he was well known for his send ups of Lyndon B. Johnson and Henry Kissinger, his all-time favorite subject was Richard Nixon — in fact, he drew him 66 times. “I might want to be critical, but I don’t wish to be destructive,” Levine once explained. “Caricature that goes too far simply lowers the viewer’s response to a person as a human being.”

Check out just a few of his Tricky Dicks from the late ’60s and early ’70s after the jump.

June 5, 1969