The double mirrored face in the blue Mac Finder icon has always been a recognizable piece of Macintosh lore. But did the concept for this graphic originate in Cupertino in the 1980s, or much earlier on another continent? Blogger Cattani Simone has noticed some similarities to a portion of Picasso’s painting Two Characters (Deux Personnages), 1934, located at MART, the Museum of Modern Art in Rovereto (TN) Italy:
The icon of the Macintosh Finder seems very similar to the face of one of the characters of the work of the Spanish artist … Initially I told myself that it wasn’t possible … I’ve never heard about that and anyway someone would know the story for sure … but on the internet there seems to be no correspondence between these things … or at least … No one has mentioned it in the network ….
Coincidence, or Great Artist Stealing? Inquiring minds need to know…
[via MacInTouch] [Daring Fireball]
Adam Rosen is an Apple certified IT consultant specializing in Macintosh systems new and old. He lives in Boston with two cats and too many possessions. In addition to membership in the Cult of Mac, Adam has written for Low End Mac and is curator of the Vintage Mac Museum. He also enjoys a good libation.
One response to “Did Picasso Influence the Mac Finder Icon?”
I did some research on the Finder icon. It looks like Bill Hernandez and Steve Jobs came up with the icon. Steve liked cubist artwork so it is very possible that influenced the icon. The Finder is really two faces. The face on the right represents the user and the face on the left is the computer personality. This makes sense since the Finder was the original way to access files on the Mac so the icon represents this collaboration between computer and human. The icon is historical but outdated since people see the Finder as a browser of files now.