Dear Readers,

It wasn't like a revelation when I saw the letters P-O-R-N substituted for the letters L-O-V-E in a riff on Robert Indiana's sixties Love sculpture recently at Art Basel Miami. It was more like a slap upside my head. Why of course, porn has replaced love. What's my problem?

My friend made a point to make sure I saw the porn sculpture by Marc Bijl, since she knew our sex issue was coming up. As we were wading our way through the last-day maddening crowd to get to it, I began to notice how much material for the sex issue there was. It was almost commonplace, the pervasive sexually explicit art in plain sight. I don't mean to sound like a prude, but since my eye had been adjusted toward that subject matter, it all of the sudden seemed to be everywhere. When it was decided to finally do that sex issue we've been talking about for the past four years, it was as if the rose-colored glasses had been ripped off my face. It seems all the rage now. Pornography in art — everybody's doing it! Our contemporary forefathers, Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, recently had shows in New York of bad paintings of big cocks and porno imagery. In some sense, I understand the young artists working with sex, but shouldn't McCarthy and Kelley be moving on by now? Or do we ever move on, when it comes to sex? It's not like something we're supposed to get over. And is that their point? Are we all ruled by our genitals? Wasn't it Luis Buñuel who said that when he became impotent he could finally get some work done?

Our first biennial sex issue came with a flood of prurient pitches from our writers: Tom of Finland, Annie Sprinkle, Italian artist Sergio Messina, Cosey Fanni Tutti. Sex toys and sexy art models. Contributor Anuradha Vikram introduced me to Zak Smith's work and writes our feature story. And we had to include some comments from John Waters, the man responsible for some of the filthiest movies ever.

Zak Smith, whose art is on the cover, embodies the world of sex and art. He lives where he works, and works where he lives. He is a minor porn star actor, his girlfriend is a porn actress and he's a consummate artist and writer. He reminds me of a younger Larry Clark — especially the way he meshes his life with his art. He records his experiences through his paintings and drawings, his prose and his sexual proclivities.

But has the art world gone too far with its sexual obsession? Curator Howard Fox gives us his professional opinion on sex and art, and says, basically, no. It's the sign of the times. We know the names of our athletes' call girls, when our president is having oral sex, and our next door neighbor on YouPorn.com. With commercial media being the forerunner in lascivious enticement, why wouldn't artists respond to the sexual revolution … again? Why bother with love anymore?

—Tulsa Kinney