Richard McGuire
Richard McGuire is an American graphic novelist, artist, and musician. His illustrations have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Le Monde, and his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum. His comic "Here" is among the most lauded comics from recent decades, with an updated graphic novel version published by Pantheon Books in December 2014. A film adaptation of Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, was released in 2024.
Biography
McGuire was born and raised in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University.Soon after graduating college, McGuire and a group of friends formed the band Liquid Idiot before relocating to Manhattan in 1979, where the group reformed as the dance-punk band Liquid Liquid, with McGuire serving as the band's bassist. Liquid Liquid is best known for the song "Cavern", whose bass line has been frequently sampled. The group disbanded in 1983 but reformed in 2008 and have played in multiple countries.
McGuire's early art career was as a street artist in the vibrant 1980s East Village scene. He participated in the landmark 1981 "New York/New Wave" group exhibition at PS1 in Long Island City, alongside notable figures such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and David Byrne.
McGuire was a key contributor to the 1995 chain story / comic jam The Narrative Corpse, shepherded by Art Spiegelman and Robert Sikoryak. McGuire was brought in to link Strand 2 of the story back to Strand 1.
McGuire's first cover for The New Yorker was published in 1993; from 2006 to 2011 his work appeared regularly on the magazine's covers.
In 2001, McGuire made two limited-edition, screenprinted artist's books for the French publisher Cornelius. The first one, Popeye and Olive, was an "abstract love story". In the second book, P + O, McGuire "rearranged the silhouetted shapes of the two characters into new combinations which became a 'vocabulary of the relationship'." In 2023 an offset edition of Popeye and Olive was published by Fotokino.
In 2009, McGuire was awarded The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers fellowship at the New York Public Library.
Comics
Short stories
- "The Dot Man," 1 pg. from Bad News #3
- "Here", 6 pgs. from RAW vol. 2 #1 . Reprinted in An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories vol. 1 and Comic Art #8
- "The Thinkers," 1 pg. from RAW vol. 2 #2
- "Bon appétit," fold-out comic booklet from 2wBOX Set I
- "ctrl," 6 pgs. from Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern#13
Graphic novels
HereChildren's literature
The Orange Book Night Becomes Day What Goes Around Comes Around What's Wrong With This Book?Artist's books
Popeye and Olive P+OFilmography
- "Micro Loup"
- ''Peur(s) du noir''
Awards
- 2009 Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers fellowship at the New York Public Library
- 2016 Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Album for the French edition of Here, titled Ici and published by Éditions Gallimard
- 2017 Gaiman Award 2nd place for Here
- 2018 Prêmio Grampo Silver for the Portuguese-language edition of Here, titled Aqui and published by Cia. das Letras
Public exhibitions
- 1981 "New York/New Wave" — group show curated by Diego Cortez
- 2014 "From Here to Here: Richard McGuire Makes a Book"
- 2018–2019 "Richard McGuire: The Way There and Back" — exhibition of 60 tabletop sculptures
- 2024 ''"Richard McGuire: Then and There, Here and Now"''