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 thedance-punk bandLiquid Liquid, with McGuire serving as the band'sbassist.[3][13][12] Liquid Liquid is best known for the song "Cavern", whose bass line has been frequently sampled.[14] The group disbanded in 1983 but reformed in 2008 and have played in multiple countries.
McGuire's first cover forThe New Yorker was published in 1993; from 2006 to 2011 his work appeared regularly on the magazine's covers.
In 2001, McGuire made twolimited-edition,screenprintedartist'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'."[16] In 2023 anoffset edition ofPopeye and Olive was published by Fotokino.[17]
2018–2019"Richard McGuire: The Way There and Back" (The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut) — exhibition of 60 tabletop sculptures[22]
^Cartoonmuseum Basel, Vincent Tuset-Anrès, Anette Gehrig, Richard McGuire (ed.):Richard McGuire – Then and There, Here and Now. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 2024, ISBN 978-3-03969-024-4.
"The Graphic Novel Panel: Chip Kidd, Charles Burns, Kim Deitch, Kaz, Richard McGuire, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware discuss contemporary funnybooks".The Comics Journal. No. 243. May 2002.
Cartoonmuseum Basel, Vincent Tuset-Anrès, Anette Gehrig, Richard McGuire (ed.): "Richard McGuire – Then and There, Here and Now". Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 2024, ISBN 978-3-03969-024-4
