WE don't think of the cover as a mere visual aid to journalism," says Louis R. Glessmann, our art director. "A TIME cover is journalism.

It is meant to convey a mood, an interpretation, no less than the story it accompanies." To illustrate his point, we have assembled a gallery of TIME originals for an exhibit opening next week at Los Angeles' Otis Art Institute. The 124 pieces of portraiture, caricature, sculpture and graphic design form a kind of life-size scrapbook of the personalities and issues of recent history.

The covers also represent nearly every conceivable art form--painting in oil and watercolor, drawing, photography, sculpture, woodcut, collage, even needlepoint. The prominent contributors over the decades include Painters Pietro Annigoni, Boris Artzybasheff, Boris Chaliapin, Dong Kingman, Henry Koerner, Peter Max, Andy Warhol, Grant Wood and Andrew Wyeth; Cartoonists Herblock, Bill Mauldin, Patrick Oliphant, Charles Schulz and James Thurber; Sculptors Robert Berks and Marisol. Among the hosts of the Los Angeles exhibit will be Glessmann and Associate Publisher Ralph Davidson.

Matching the right artist and subject gets careful consideration, particularly if the face to be painted is already instantly known or if we choose a symbolic cover instead of a likeness. In May of 1968, when Robert Kennedy was near the crest of his primary election campaign, we selected Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein. He depicted Kennedy as an all-American hero in a comic book motif. When Raquel Welch was the cover subject in 1969, we might have chosen a glamour specialist. Instead, the assignment went to Frank Gallo, a sculptor with a satiric streak. He rendered Raquel lifesize, in a style reminiscent of a 19th century ship's figurehead.

This week, for our cover on espionage, we chose a collage by Dennis Wheeler that incorporates a stylized face and some of the dark profession's paraphernalia. One of Wheeler's best remembered contributions was for the 1969 cover "The Sex Explosion." He used a color photograph of a nude couple seen behind a giant, zippered fig leaf.

Often the selection process starts with nominations by Covers Researcher Rosemary Frank. For six years she has been scouting the galleries for new artists and screening the dozens of unsolicited works that are offered to us each week; last year 20 artists made their first TIME cover appearances. Glessmann is himself an experienced graphic designer (Holiday, Parents Magazine) who two years ago took charge of TIME'S typography and art. For each cover he chooses one or more artists and works with them to help them capture the story's flavor. As a rule he obtains two or three finished works, often radically different in style and concept, from which the editors make a final choice.

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