6. Sartre à Barthes mais plus ça change
More of the same, but different, with cover art by James Lowe in 1975-84.
Under Mike Dempsey's art direction the covers of the Fontana Modern Masters switched to a white background with cover art by James Lowe, a graduate of the Royal Academy Schools in London, whose geometric paintings and shapedcanvases had been exhibited in Young Contemporaries at the Tate Gallery in
1967 and several exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery, London, in 1967-70.
Lowe created three sets of cover art based on triangles, then squares, and finally circles under a new art director, Patrick Mortimer, following Dempsey's departure in 1979. The covers gave the books a fresh new look like a gallery, its walls repainted white and hung with shaped canvases.
Fontana Modern Masters in 1975-76, with cover art by James Lowe based on triangles.
Fontana Modern Masters in 1977-79, with cover art by James Lowe based on squares.
Fontana Modern Masters in 1980-84, with cover art by James Lowe based on circles.
Second and third editions of the Fontana Modern Masters in 1985-95 dispensed with cover art and added six new titles, Foucault, Derrida,
Winnicott, Lacan, Arendt and Berlin. The books were slighty larger and featured a portrait of the 'Master' as a line
drawing, or later a tinted photograph. The suspicion that Fontana's art department had closed was reinforced by a medley of serif and sans-serif typography,
calligraphy, block capitals, italics and lowercase lettering.