Portrait of The Beatles
1968
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1968
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
This print turns four famous faces into a grid of M, O, and * symbols. Jaume Estapà made it in 1968 with only those three computer characters. Early printers couldn’t draw pictures, so artists used text to fake shading and shapes. He layered the symbols over and over to make light and dark stripes. It’s an early trick called ASCII art. Look up the artist Jaume Estapà.
