Scarce color 22.5 x 30 Apple Computer lithograph entitled ‘The Macintosh Spirit,’ which features artwork by Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon of ‘Macintosh Man’ holding a keyboard and mouse and flying amongst a planet-filled sky, with stylized lettering below, “Macintosh,” and the lower section bearing seven lines of multilingual text, each reading “The Macintosh Spirit.” Folon's facsimile artist signature is printed in the lower right. Rolled and in fine condition, with trivial edgewear and a few light marks to the borders, all of which could be matted out if so desired.
In the early 1980s, before the famed Picasso-style line drawing of a computer became the Macintosh logo, the graphic was set to feature a very different concept. Owen Linzmayer discusses the original effort in his 2004 book, Apple Confidential 2.0: ‘Long before the Mac was complete, Steve Jobs had become quite taken with the work of Belgian-born poster artist Jean-Michel Folon and paid him an advance of $30,000 to design a logo to represent the new computer. Folon came up with a character he called Mac Man and depicted him in a color pastel drawing called ‘The Macintosh Spirit.’
In addition to his hefty advance, Folon was to be paid an unprecedented royalty of $1 for every Mac sold. With almost 30 million Macs sold as of 1998, the Macintosh commission would have easily been Folon's most lucrative undertaking. But after Folon submitted ‘The Macintosh Spirit,’ the mercurial Jobs changed his mind. In June 1983, he turned instead to the Mac art director, Tom Hughes, asking him to come up with something a little more practical. Working with John Casado, Hughes created the colorful, simple drawing of the Mac that we've come to know and love.'
From the Clement Mok Collection.
