Director, Glenn Lowry: Heinecken often manipulated magazines by inserting new images into them—as in Periodical #5. Here, the image is a disturbing photograph he found in Time magazine in 1971, of a Cambodian soldier holding two severed heads.
Artist, Robert Heinecken: I made an offset plate of that image and then overprinted it on each page of a whole series of different magazines in the same position on that page. So as you would go through it you're simply seeing that image modify whatever it happens to fall on, whether it's a picture or an ad or text or whatever.
Glenn Lowry: Curator Eva Respini.
Curator, Eva Respini: I think how he printed this grisly image on top of a fashion image, he was absolutely attuned to exactly where this image lay. In this vitrine there are over 50 magazines that he made throughout his career, in Heinecken's words, "compromised" magazines. They're meant to be flipped through because every single page is manipulated by the artist.
Glenn Lowry: Heinecken used this same process on different magazines.
Robert Heinecken: I went to the newsstand and got the current Time magazines, took them back to the studio and put those covers on these magazines, and then put them back on the newsstand. So they were sold as regular Time magazines. As I look back at it now, it seems absolutely irresponsible. But at the time, it seemed just right.