Richard Mock, Sculptor, Painter and Editorial
Cartoonist, 61, Dies
Roberta Smith, New York Times
Richard Mock, a painter and sculptor whose interest in
politics led to a second career as an editorial
cartoonist, died on July 28 in Brooklyn, where he
lived. He was 61.
His death followed a long illness, said his companion,
Roberta Waddell, curator of prints at the New York
Public Library.
Mr. Mock was a lifelong painter whose work ranged from
a cartoonish, politically charged Neo-Expressionism
through portraiture and self-portraiture to bright,
paint-laden abstractions. But he was best known for
the satiric linocut illustrations on social and
political issues that appeared on the Op-Ed page of
The New York Times from 1980 to 1996, in other New
York-based newspapers and in worldwide publications.Notable for their sharp wit and bold, black-on-white
forms, these linoleum prints reflected the influence
of the German Expressionist Max Beckmann (1884-1950)
and the Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada
(1852-1913).
In the late 1990’s, Mr. Mock’s social commentary
segued into three dimensions with his “Money Lures”
sculpture series, which consisted of large fishing
lures made of commercially shredded American currency.
Born in Long Beach, Calif., in 1944, Mr. Mock learned
lithography and block printing at the University of
Michigan, where he earned a bachelor’s degree on a
football scholarship in 1965. He settled in New York
in 1968, had his first solo exhibition at 112 Greene
Street, the loosely run artists’ cooperative in SoHo,
in 1972, and was included in the 1973 Whitney
Biennial. In 1980, Mr. Mock participated in the “Times
Square Show,” which is often seen as the starting
point of the East Village art scene, and he was also
the official portrait painter of the 1980 Winter
Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.
Mr. Mock was frequently involved with children’s art
projects and taught art at Public School 6 in
Manhattan from 1998 to 2002. The New York alternative
space Exit Art held a survey of his work in 1986. In
his most recent New York exhibition, at the Sideshow
Gallery, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2004, his
prints were shown with those of several Mexican
political printmakers, including Posada.
In addition to Ms. Waddell, he is survived by his
mother, Maxine Berry, of Cape Coral, Fla., and a
sister, Bonnie Mock, of Sacramento, Calif.
