David Levine, Famous Illustrator, Dies

David Levine, the illustrator whose expressive and often unflattering caricatures were the iconic images of The New York Review of Books, died Tuesday morning in Manhattan. The New York Times writes that the 83-year-old’s portraits “betrayed the mind of an artist concerned, worriedly concerned, about the world in which he lived.” His most famous images include Lyndon B. Johnson revealing the scar from his gallbladder surgery in the shape of Vietnam and Henry Kissinger having sex beneath an American flag with a woman whose head is in the shape of a globe—a depiction, Levine said, of what Kissinger had done to the world. His favorite subject was Richard Nixon, whom he drew 66 times.