Dear Reader,
This is our sex issue, and I regret to say that since my husband passed away last year I haven’t had much to say on the subject.

I haven’t stopped thinking about it, or listening to other people talk about it—it’s just more remote, that’s all. And I don’t feel like faking it. And when I see all these artists focusing on sex in their work, I think, hmm, I bet they’re getting laid.

Whether you’re getting it or not, sex is still on your mind. Even if you’re able to blot it out for a while, it continues to bombard your brain in the form of billboards, commercials and music. It will surface in your dreams, your Freudian slips, your grandmother’s silver tongue.

Sex. It’s what brought us into the world and it is often the source of our last regrets: we didn’t get enough of it, we didn’t do it with the right person, we declined an invitation to an orgy. It’s constantly on one’s mind. And, it is frequently featured in artworks.

History shows us the ancient friezes of Pompeii and vases depicting sexual acts—rather risqué even by today’s standards: orgies, pansexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, you name it. It’s always been there, whether behind closed doors or in closets. Nowadays, it just seems more pervasive, thanks to easy access on the internet and other forms of media.

As our regular contributor Zak Smith’s sex-in-the-art-world feature article points out, as long as people are still making art, there will be art about sex.

Art critic/writer Frances Colpitt reviews the Dallas Contemporary’s current exhibition “John Currin: My Life As a Man,” where male dominance is shrouded in ambiguities. And I interview author Toni Bentley about her 2004 literary tour de force, The Surrender, on the topic of sexual submission and erotica.

The world of sex. It can be fraught with elation, joy and perversion. It’s as natural as the air we breathe, yet so powerful that it can create partnerships for life or destroy families. Even in an issue dedicated to the subject, we barely touch the surface of the role sex plays in art for, as we know, it’s a huge subject in life.

I guess I did have something to say about it after all.