Fontana Modern Masters
Encyclopedia
The Fontana Modern Masters was a series of pocket guides on the writers, philosophers
, and other thinkers and theorists whose ideas were shaping the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. The first five titles were published on 12 January 1970 by Fontana Books, the paperback imprint of William Collins & Co
. The series editor was Frank Kermode
who, at the time, was Professor of Modern English Literature
at University College London
. The books were very popular with students who, according to Kermode, 'bought them by the handful' and were instantly recognisable by their eye-catching covers, which featured brightly-coloured geometric paintings overlaid with modern sans-serif
typography
.
The cover concept was the brainchild of Fontana's art director John Constable, who had initially been experimenting with a cover treatment based on cut-ups of The Mud Bath, a key work of British geometric abstraction by the painter David Bomberg
. However, a chance visit to the Grabowski Gallery in London introduced Constable to the work of Oliver Bevan
, a graduate of the Royal College of Art
in 1964, whose optical and geometric paintings were influenced by the Op Art of Victor Vasarely. On seeing Bevan's work, Constable commissioned him to create the covers of the first ten Fontana Modern Masters, which Bevan painted as rectilinear arrangements of tesselating blocks. Each cover was thus a piece of abstract art, but as an incentive for readers to buy all ten books the covers could be arranged to create a larger, composite artwork. The first 'set of ten' to use Constable's cover concept and Bevan's cut-up painting appeared in 1970-71 but the set overran when Joyce was published with the same cover as Guevara:
A second 'set of ten' with a new Bevan cut-up was art-directed by Constable in 1971-73 but the inclusion of Joyce in the first 'set of ten' left this second set short of a book:
Constable's third 'set of ten' featuring Bevan's kinetic Pyramid paintings began to appear in 1973-74 but Constable left before the set was complete and his replacement, Mike Dempsey
, scrapped the set-of-ten incentive after eight books:
For the next eight books in 1975-76, Dempsey switched the covers to a white background with a tesselating block design by a new artist, James Lowe:
Dempsey art-directed nine more books featuring a new block design by Lowe in 1977-79:
Dempsey left Fontana Books in 1979 but continued to oversee the Modern Masters series until a new art director, Patrick Mortimer, was appointed in 1980. Four more books followed under Mortimer, who retained Dempsey's white background but replaced Lowe's angular artwork with coloured curves:
The cover concept was dropped after this and a new design was introduced that featured a portrait of the Modern Master as a line drawing or later a tinted photograph, and mixed serif and sans-serif typefaces, upright and italic fonts, block capitals, lowercase letters and faux handwriting. The design was used for reprints and six new titles:
ist Jamie Shovlin
'reproduced' the covers of the forty-eight Fontana Modern Masters from Camus to Barthes as a series of flawed paintings (the titles are missing and the colours have run) in watercolour and ink on paper, each measuring 28 x 19 cm. However, Shovlin also noticed ten forthcoming titles listed on the books' front endpapers which, for reasons unknown, had not been published:
Shovlin then set out to paint these 'lost' titles and thus 'complete' the series. To do this he devised a Fontana Colour Chart based on the covers of the published books, and a scoring system that - like his paintings - was deliberately flawed. Given these flaws, and those in Fontana's original series, it is interesting to note, as Shovlin did, the absence of any Modern Masters from the visual arts, since Matisse was one of four 'forthcoming titles' which Shovlin had apparently overlooked:
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, and other thinkers and theorists whose ideas were shaping the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. The first five titles were published on 12 January 1970 by Fontana Books, the paperback imprint of William Collins & Co
William Collins (publisher)
William Collins was a Scottish schoolmaster and publisher.Collins was born near Glasgow in 1789. In 1819 he set up a publishing business, initially selling religious books. He produced the first Collins dictionary in 1824, when he also obtained a licence to publish the Bible...
. The series editor was Frank Kermode
Frank Kermode
Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 ....
who, at the time, was Professor of Modern English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
. The books were very popular with students who, according to Kermode, 'bought them by the handful' and were instantly recognisable by their eye-catching covers, which featured brightly-coloured geometric paintings overlaid with modern sans-serif
Sans-serif
In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....
typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
.
Art as book covers
The Fontana Modern Masters occupy a unique place in publishing history - not for the contents of the books but for their covers, which draw on the following developments in twentieth-century art and literature:- Twentieth-century geometric abstraction, colour-field paintingColor FieldColor Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...
and hard-edge paintingHard-edge paintingHard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.-History of the term:The term was...
. - Op ArtOp artOp art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions."Optical art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing." Op art works are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made...
, and in particular the work of the Hungarian-born artist Victor VasarelyVictor VasarelyVictor Vasarely was a Hungarian French artist whose work is generally seen aligned with Op-art.His work entitled Zebra, created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art...
. - The English beatnikBeatnikBeatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
Brion Gysin'sBrion GysinBrion Gysin was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs...
cut-up techniqueCut-up techniqueThe cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing....
as popularized by the American novelist William BurroughsWilliam S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
.
The cover concept was the brainchild of Fontana's art director John Constable, who had initially been experimenting with a cover treatment based on cut-ups of The Mud Bath, a key work of British geometric abstraction by the painter David Bomberg
David Bomberg
David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington...
. However, a chance visit to the Grabowski Gallery in London introduced Constable to the work of Oliver Bevan
Oliver Bevan
Oliver Bevan is a British artist who was born in Peterborough, UK, and educated at Eton College. After leaving school he spent a year in 1959-60 working for Voluntary Service Overseas in British North Borneo before returning to London to study painting at the Royal College of Art, where he became...
, a graduate of the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
in 1964, whose optical and geometric paintings were influenced by the Op Art of Victor Vasarely. On seeing Bevan's work, Constable commissioned him to create the covers of the first ten Fontana Modern Masters, which Bevan painted as rectilinear arrangements of tesselating blocks. Each cover was thus a piece of abstract art, but as an incentive for readers to buy all ten books the covers could be arranged to create a larger, composite artwork. The first 'set of ten' to use Constable's cover concept and Bevan's cut-up painting appeared in 1970-71 but the set overran when Joyce was published with the same cover as Guevara:
- CamusAlbert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
by Conor Cruise O'BrienConor Cruise O'BrienConor Cruise O'Brien often nicknamed "The Cruiser", was an Irish politician, writer, historian and academic. Although his opinion on the role of Britain in Northern Ireland changed over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, he always acknowledge values of, as he saw, the two irreconcilable traditions...
, 1970 - ChomskyNoam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
by John LyonsJohn Lyons (linguist)Sir John Lyons, LittD, FBA is an English linguist, most famous for his work on semantics.John Lyons was educated at St Bede's College, Manchester, and at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in Classics in 1953 and a Diploma in Education in 1954. After doing his national service in...
, 1970 - FanonFrantz FanonFrantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
by David CauteDavid CauteJohn David Caute is a British author, novelist, playwright, historian and journalist.Caute was educated at Edinburgh Academy, Wellington, Wadham College, Oxford and St Antony's College, Oxford. A Henry Fellow at Harvard, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1959, but resigned in...
, 1970 - GuevaraChe GuevaraErnesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
by Andrew SinclairAndrew SinclairDr Andrew Sinclair is a prolific British novelist, historian, biographer, critic and film-maker. He was a Founding Member of Churchill College, Cambridge. He directed the film, now regarded as a classic, of Under Milk Wood. His book The Better Half: The Emancipation of the American Woman won the...
, 1970 - Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
by Edmund LeachEdmund LeachSir Edmund Ronald Leach was a British social anthropologist of whom it has been said:"It is no exaggeration to say that in sheer versatility, originality, and range of writing he was and still is difficult to match among the anthropologists of the English speaking world".-Personal and academic...
, 1970 - Lukács by George LichtheimGeorge LichtheimGeorge Lichtheim was a German-born intellectual whose works focused on the history and theory of socialism and Marxism. He defined himself as a socialist and stated in a 1964 letter to the New York Review of Books that "I am not a liberal and never have been...
, 1970 - MarcuseHerbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
by Alasdair MacIntyreAlasdair MacIntyreAlasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a British philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology...
, 1970 - McLuhanMarshall McLuhanHerbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
by Jonathan MillerJonathan MillerSir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...
, 1971 - OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
by Raymond WilliamsRaymond WilliamsRaymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
, 1971 - WittgensteinLudwig WittgensteinLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
by David PearsDavid PearsDavid Pears was a British philosopher renowned for his work on Wittgenstein.An Old Boy of Westminster School, he was in the Royal Artillery during World War II, and was seriously injured in a practice gas attack. After leaving the army he studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, and was then...
, 1971 - JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
by John GrossJohn GrossJohn Gross FRSL was an eminent English author, anthologist, literary and theatrical critic. The Spectator magazine called Gross “the best-read man in Britain”, as did The Guardian...
, 1971
A second 'set of ten' with a new Bevan cut-up was art-directed by Constable in 1971-73 but the inclusion of Joyce in the first 'set of ten' left this second set short of a book:
- FreudSigmund FreudSigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
by Richard WollheimRichard WollheimRichard Arthur Wollheim was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting...
, 1971 - ReichWilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...
by Charles RycroftCharles RycroftCharles Frederick Rycroft was a British psychologist and a well-known author. For most of his career he had a private psychiatric practice in London.-Life:...
, 1971 - YeatsWilliam Butler YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
by Denis DonoghueDenis DonoghueDenis Donoghue is an Irish literary critic. He is currently the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters at New York University....
, 1971 - Gandhi by George WoodcockGeorge WoodcockGeorge Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
, 1972 - LeninVladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
by Robert ConquestRobert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
, 1972 - MailerNorman MailerNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
by Richard PoirierRichard PoirierRichard Poirier was an American literary critic.He co-founded the Library of America, and served as chairman of its board. He was the Marius Bewley Professor of American and English Literature at Rutgers University...
, 1972 - RussellBertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
by A J Ayer, 1972 - JungCarl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
by Anthony StorrAnthony StorrAnthony Storr was an English psychiatrist and author. Born in London, he was a child who was to endure the typical trauma of early 20th century boarding schools. He was educated at Winchester College, Christ's College , and Westminster Hospital. He qualified as a doctor in 1944, and subsequently...
, 1973 - LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
by Frank Kermode, 1973
Constable's third 'set of ten' featuring Bevan's kinetic Pyramid paintings began to appear in 1973-74 but Constable left before the set was complete and his replacement, Mike Dempsey
Mike Dempsey
Mike Dempsey trained in calligraphy and typography and has been a practising graphic designer since 1964. From the late sixtieshe worked as an art director for two leading British publishing houses, William Heinemann and William Collins & Sons. In 1979 he...
, scrapped the set-of-ten incentive after eight books:
- BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
by A AlvarezAl AlvarezAl Alvarez is an English poet, writer and critic who publishes under the name A. Alvarez and Al Alvarez....
, 1973 - EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
by Jeremy Bernstein, 1973 - Laing by Edgar Z Friedenberg, 1973
- PopperKarl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
by Bryan MageeBryan MageeBryan Edgar Magee is a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, poet, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.-Early life:...
, 1973 - KafkaFranz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
by Erich HellerErich HellerErich Heller was a British essayist, known particularly for his critical studies in German-language philosophy and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.- Biography :...
, 1974 - Le CorbusierLe CorbusierCharles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
by Stephen GardinerStephen Gardiner (architect)Stephen Gardiner OBE was a British architect, teacher and writer.Gardiner was born and raised in Chelsea in London. He was the younger son of Clive Gardiner, painter and principal of Goldsmiths College from 1929 to 1958, and Lily Lancaster, also a painter and one of Walter Sickert's favourite...
, 1974 - ProustMarcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
by Roger ShattuckRoger ShattuckRoger Whitney Shattuck was an American writer best known for his books on French literature, art, and music of the twentieth century.-Background and education:...
, 1974 - WeberMax WeberKarl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
by Donald G MacRae, 1974
For the next eight books in 1975-76, Dempsey switched the covers to a white background with a tesselating block design by a new artist, James Lowe:
- EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
by Stephen SpenderStephen SpenderSir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, 1975 - MarxKarl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
by David McLellan, 1975 - PoundEzra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
by Donald DavieDonald DavieDonald Alfred Davie was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes.-Biography:...
, 1975 - SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
by Arthur C DantoArthur DantoArthur Coleman Danto Arthur Coleman Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (born January 1, 1924 is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy. He is best known as the influential, long-time art critic for The Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he...
, 1975 - ArtaudAntonin ArtaudAntoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
by Martin EsslinMartin EsslinMartin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...
, 1976 - KeynesJohn Maynard KeynesJohn Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
by D E Moggridge, 1976 - SaussureFerdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
by Jonathan CullerJonathan CullerJonathan Culler is a class of 1966 Harvard graduate and Professor of English at Cornell University. He is an important figure of the structuralism movement of literary theory and criticism.- Background and career:...
, 1976 - SchoenbergArnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
by Charles RosenCharles RosenCharles Rosen is an American pianist and author on music.-Life and career:In his youth he studied piano with Moriz Rosenthal. Rosenthal, born in 1862, had been a student of Franz Liszt...
, 1976
Dempsey art-directed nine more books featuring a new block design by Lowe in 1977-79:
- EngelsFriedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
by David McLellan, 1977 - GramsciAntonio GramsciAntonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
by James JollJames JollJames Bysse Joll FBA was a British historian and university lecturer whose works included The Origins of the First World War and Europe Since 1870. He also wrote on the history of anarchism and socialism.-Biography:...
, 1977 - DurkheimÉmile DurkheimDavid Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
by Anthony Giddens, 1978 - HeideggerMartin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
by George SteinerGeorge SteinerFrancis George Steiner, FBA , is an influential European-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust...
, 1978 - NietzscheFriedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
by J P SternJ. P. SternJoseph Peter Stern, in full: Joseph Peter Maria Stern , was an authority on German literature. He was Professor at University College London from 1972 to 1986....
, 1978 - TrotskyLeon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
by Irving HoweIrving HoweIrving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Life and career:...
, 1978 - KleinMelanie KleinMelanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
by Hanna SegalHanna SegalHanna Segal was a British psychoanalyst and a follower of Melanie Klein. She was president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and vice-president of the International Psychoanalytical Association...
, 1979 - PavlovIvan PavlovIvan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
by Jeffrey A GrayJeffrey Alan GrayJeffrey Alan Gray was a British psychologist. He was born in the East End of London. His father was a tailor, but died when Jeffrey was only seven. His mother, who ran a haberdashery, brought him up alone....
, 1979 - PiagetJean PiagetJean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
by Margaret A BodenMargaret BodenDr Margaret A. Boden, OBE, is a combinative researcher in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Philosophy, Cognitive and Computer Science...
, 1979
Dempsey left Fontana Books in 1979 but continued to oversee the Modern Masters series until a new art director, Patrick Mortimer, was appointed in 1980. Four more books followed under Mortimer, who retained Dempsey's white background but replaced Lowe's angular artwork with coloured curves:
- Evans-PritchardE. E. Evans-PritchardSir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology...
by Mary DouglasMary DouglasDame Mary Douglas, DBE, FBA was a British anthropologist, known for her writings on human culture and symbolism....
, 1980 - DarwinCharles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
by Wilma George, 1982 - BarthesRoland BarthesRoland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
by Jonathan CullerJonathan CullerJonathan Culler is a class of 1966 Harvard graduate and Professor of English at Cornell University. He is an important figure of the structuralism movement of literary theory and criticism.- Background and career:...
, 1983 - AdornoTheodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
by Martin JayMartin JayMartin Jay is the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a renowned Intellectual Historian and his research interests have been groundbreaking in connecting history with other academic and intellectual activities, such as the Critical Theory of...
, 1984
The cover concept was dropped after this and a new design was introduced that featured a portrait of the Modern Master as a line drawing or later a tinted photograph, and mixed serif and sans-serif typefaces, upright and italic fonts, block capitals, lowercase letters and faux handwriting. The design was used for reprints and six new titles:
- FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
by J G MerquiorJosé Guilherme MerquiorJosé Guilherme Merquior was a Brazilian diplomat, academic, writer, literary critic and philosopher.-Biography:...
, 1985 - DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
by Christopher Norris, 1987 - WinnicottDonald WinnicottDonald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory. He was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and a close associate of Marion Milner...
by Adam PhillipsAdam Phillips (psychologist)Adam Phillips is a British child psychotherapist, literary critic and essayist. He is known for his books dealing with topics related to psychoanalysis...
, 1988 - LacanJacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
by Malcolm BowieMalcolm BowieMalcolm McNaughtan Bowie FBA was a British academic, and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2002 to 2006. An acclaimed scholar of French literature, Bowie wrote several books on Marcel Proust....
, 1991 - ArendtHannah ArendtHannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
by David Watson, 1992 - BerlinIsaiah BerlinSir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
by John Gray, 1995
Book covers as art
Fontana's use of art as book covers went full circle in 2003-05 when the British conceptual artConceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
ist Jamie Shovlin
Jamie Shovlin
Jamie Shovlin is a British conceptual artist.He staged his first exhibition in 2004 basing it on what he claimed were the drawings of a disappeared schoolgirl called Naomi V. Jelish. He supported this claim with newspaper cuttings and diaries, and the work was bought for £25,000 by Charles Saatchi...
'reproduced' the covers of the forty-eight Fontana Modern Masters from Camus to Barthes as a series of flawed paintings (the titles are missing and the colours have run) in watercolour and ink on paper, each measuring 28 x 19 cm. However, Shovlin also noticed ten forthcoming titles listed on the books' front endpapers which, for reasons unknown, had not been published:
- MannThomas MannThomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
by Lionel TrillingLionel TrillingLionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S... - NeedhamJoseph NeedhamNoel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British scientist, historian and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, and as a fellow of the British...
by George Steiner - KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
by Lionel Trilling - FullerBuckminster FullerRichard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
by Allan TemkoAllan TemkoAllan Bernard Temko was a Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic and writer based in San Francisco.Born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey, Temko served as a U.S... - SteinbergSaul SteinbergSaul Steinberg was a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.-Biography:...
by John HollanderJohn HollanderJohn Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University... - Dostoyevsky by Harold RosenbergHarold RosenbergHarold Rosenberg was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of...
- SherringtonCharles Scott SherringtonSir Charles Scott Sherrington, OM, GBE, PRS was an English neurophysiologist, histologist, bacteriologist, and a pathologist, Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society in the early 1920s...
by Jonathan Miller - JakobsonRoman JakobsonRoman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
by Thomas A SebeokThomas SebeokThomas Albert Sebeok was a polymathic American semiotician and linguist.- Life and work :... - Merleau-PontyMaurice Merleau-PontyMaurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
by H P Dreyfus - Winnicott by Masud KhanMasud KhanMohammed Masud Raza Khan was an Indian-born British psychoanalyst. His training analyst was Donald Winnicott.-Early life:...
(this had actually been published with a different author in 1988; see previous section, above)
Shovlin then set out to paint these 'lost' titles and thus 'complete' the series. To do this he devised a Fontana Colour Chart based on the covers of the published books, and a scoring system that - like his paintings - was deliberately flawed. Given these flaws, and those in Fontana's original series, it is interesting to note, as Shovlin did, the absence of any Modern Masters from the visual arts, since Matisse was one of four 'forthcoming titles' which Shovlin had apparently overlooked:
- BenjaminWalter BenjaminWalter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
by Samuel WeberSamuel WeberSamuel Weber is the Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University, as well as a professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.... - EriksonErik EriksonErik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...
by Robert LiftonRobert Jay LiftonRobert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform... - HoHo Chi MinhHồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
by David HalberstamDavid HalberstamDavid Halberstam was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and historian, known for his early work on the Vietnam War, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism.-Early life and education:Halberstam... - MatisseHenri MatisseHenri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
by David SylvesterDavid SylvesterAnthony David Bernard Sylvester CBE, was a British art critic and curator. Although he received no formal education in the arts, during his long career he was influential in promoting modern artists, in particular the work of Joan Miró, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.Born into a well connected...
External links
- Fontana Modern Masters Books, Art, and Books as Art: A Cover Story.
- Cascade Limited edition giclée print of Oliver Bevan's 'cut-up' Op Art for the first ten Fontana Modern Masters.