A letter from the PUBLISHER

WE have used many art forms for " TIME covers--painting, drawing, cartoon, collage, woodcut, sculpture --but never before the special blend that makes up this week's cover on Playboy Editor Hugh Hefner. It is the work of Marisol, whose highly original and wryly appealing style joins wood sculpture, drawing and painting (not to mention carpentry) in a unique combination. The components of her portraits may be odd --a box, a block, a barrel--but they perceptively convey likeness as well as character. "Her art is that of a toy-maker," wrote TIME'S art critic in 1963, "designed to appeal to that part of the mind in which fantasy and reality seem identical. The only difference is that a toy can be outgrown; it seems doubtful that the same will soon be said of the work of Marisol."

Her whimsical Hefner is a walk-around sculpture, 6 ft. tall, meant to be viewed from all sides. The body is painted onto a hollow box. The head is a wooden block that actually consists of a dozen pine boards glued together and shaped by Marisol's electric saw to look vaguely like a jet engine. Why a jet engine? She does not know. When the work arrived at our offices to be photographed for the cover by Frank Lerner, all the editors (well, nearly all) were delighted. But there were questions. Why the red, white and blue? "Perhaps he's the All-American boy." The tucked-under hand--on the right when the work is viewed from the front--pokes out on the wrong side in back. Was it a mistake? "No, I like to make things absurd." And the two pipes? "He has too much of everything."

The artist, who was born Marisol Escobar in Paris 36 years ago, of Venezuelan parents, studied in New York under the noted abstract expressionist, Hans Hofmann. Her much-sought-after work is in several U.S. museums, including Manhattan's Modern Art and the Whitney. She usually works more slowly than she did on her TIME commission, will spend as much as three months on a single piece in the company of her cairn terrier, Trolli.

Introspective and shy, but sharp, Marisol knew quite a bit about Playboy and Hugh Hefner. Recently she was asked to do a sculpture as part of a spread in which modern artists interpreted the Playmates. Marisol thought about it for a while, then declined because she "couldn't think of anything interesting to do. They look like caricatures already."

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