Steve Jobs has a long way to go before he can catch up to the Virgin Mary as one

of the most immortalized figures in art. But the late Apple founder and his life-

changing innovations continue to inspire artists across many fields and media:

sculptors, painters, filmmakers, animators, tattoo artists, and even opera composers.

Shortly after his death from cancer in 2011, Jobs ascended to icon status, with

Jobs-inspired art everywhere to prove it.

Jonathan Mak Long, a graphic arts student, used a profile of Jobs in silhou-

ette to form the bite out of the apple in the company’s logo. Though simple, the

black-and-white image captured the grief and gratitude of millions of Apple fans

and immediately went viral.

The founder of a software company in Budapest, Hungary, commissioned

a well-known European artist to create a 7-foot bronze figure of Jobs, dressed in

jeans and mock-turtleneck shirt, seemingly pontificating at a product unveiling.

An opera called The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which debuted in the sum-

mer of 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sought to bring Jobs’s genius to life on the

stage. A Pulitzer Prize–winning librettist fused Jobs’s spiritual interests and the

development of his company to tell a story about innovation, power, and humanity.

But nothing deifies a person quite like making them into a tattoo, a form

of immortalization usually reserved for rock stars and religious figures. Jobs’s

face and quotes adorn the bodies of a number of hardcore Apple fans.

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(PAGE 19) Jonathan Mak Long’s graphic tribute to

Jobs. ILLUSTRATION: Jonathan Mak Long (2011)