ALL-TIME BEST ENTREPRENEUR:
STEVE JOBS
FAVOURITE ARTIST: ANDY WARHOL
STEVE JOBS
(February 24,
1955 – October 5, 2011)
One of the greatest influences of technology
and innovation passed away this morning at the waking hours of millions of
consumers and admirers.
Steven Paul (Steve) Jobs was one of a kind. Born
in an American family in San Francisco
The whole “Steve jobs” story started with an
adoption from a Syrian family. The lucky ones were a middle class family with
no education or loads of savings who promised to enroll their adopted yet
beloved child in college.
The promise was kept. Jobs enrolled in Reed College
One of the courses Jobs took after his drop out
was calligraphy. Ten years later, the essence of the Macintosh computer was designed
thanks to this class, which at the time didn’t have lots of prospects in Job’s entrepreneurship.
“The “mac” would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced
fonts”, he says at his speech at Stanford
University
Jobs first real steps
into the active life, exempting one summer at Hewlet Packard before high school
graduation, were as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games. One day, he was given the task
of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. With the help of a friend’s technical skills, Steve Wozniak, they
managed to create the circuit board with minimum expenses for Atari. Although
Jobs agreed to split the profit 50 -50, he gave Wozniak $350 instead of the $2,500
he deserved.
Wozniak, a previous
electronics hacker who firslty co-found Apple with Ronald Wayne, was impressed
of Jobs skills when he assembled a computer and then
sold it. This led him to make Jobs part of the newly created Apple Co. Others
say that Jobs and Wozniak started Apple together in Jobs’ garage. Both ways,
Apple expanded further.
The
years passed and major successful moments mostly thanks to Jobs’ charisma and
persuasion occurred even when Apple was at the verge of bankruptcy, he managed
to successfully lift it up. Still, he got fired because of a misunderstanding
with the then CEO. He was 30.
“It
turns out getting fired from Apple was the best things that could happen to
me”, he said. That’s very accurate and modest coming from Jobs’ mouth as he
then started various famous companies up until today called Pixar and NeXT. The
former gave him a family and the latter gave him back his job after NeXT was
bought by Apple.
In
2004, at 49 years of age, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had few
months to live. Still, he made it until 2011 and lived to promote several funky
laptops and desktops, a whole range of Ipods, two generations of Ipads, and
four generations of Iphone; All this being a huge amount of profit.
He was
persuasive, he was charismatic, and he was most importantly loved by all
friends, family, consumers, and suppliers. Rest in peace Mr. Steve Jobs.
Tim Cook, successor
of Apple says: “We will honor
his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.”
FAVOURITE ARTIST: ANDY WARHOL
I do not recall talking to someone about Andy Warhol and telling me he doesn't enjoy observing his work. I believe it is a way of redeeming yourself just by comtemplating it. Although he also is a director, writer, publisher, what mostly impresses me is the way he combines colours and faces.. He is for me the definition of Pop Art.
Smoking Madonna
He is the one who should be called the King of Pop. This Pittsburg homeboy, originally Slovak, started his artistic work as an illustrator in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar for commercial advertising (1949) and saw himself within five years a one-man exhibitor at the Hugo Gallery in New York (1952) and later on at the Museum of Modern Art (1956).
His first paintings were about transforming daily, banal object into a work of art (i.e.: Campbell Soup, Coca Cola). After attracting a lot of critics and scholars, Warhol succeeded in having a fan club and later on, he went from Soup can collage to silk screen personalities print, his favourite technique (i.e. Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, etc.)
"When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums."
In 1962, he founded The Factory in New York, a chaotic place where everything Warhol produces (from mass production posters to filmmaking) comes out.
Portrait from Brigitte Bardot series (1974)
Portrait from Mick Jagger series (1970)
Portrait from Deborah Harris (1980)
Warhol almost died because of a woman!! He was shot two - three times into his chest by an employee of the Factory named Valerie Solanis just because she believed Andy had "too much control over [her] life". That is when he started exclusively making portraits of the rich and famous of the time.
"Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television."
What is missing? to publish a magazine of course! And that is exactly what Warhol did in 1974 with his "ose" magazine Interview.
INTERVIEW Magazine / Collector's Issue April 2008 INTERVIEW Magazine / June 1993 Issue
DID YOU KNOW THAT:
Andy Warhol's real name was Adrew Warhola (he dropped it in 1949)
Warhol's first movie was called Sleep and showed nothing else but a man sleeping over six hours?
Valerie Solanis was the founder of a group called SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men)
Warhol owned a night club in the early 70s
Andy Warhol was homosexual
Wore a wig in public
Warhol's proteges were Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe
Andy Warhol's real name was Adrew Warhola (he dropped it in 1949)
Warhol's first movie was called Sleep and showed nothing else but a man sleeping over six hours?
Valerie Solanis was the founder of a group called SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men)
Warhol owned a night club in the early 70s
Andy Warhol was homosexual
Wore a wig in public
Warhol's proteges were Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe
Keith Haring Robert Mapplethorpe
"I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows."
And of COURSE we shall not forget my favourite of all times:
Nine Marilyns (1962)
