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. 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'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. == Bibliography ==