Sex is a 1992 coffee table book written by American singer Madonna, with photography by Steven Meisel Studio and Fabien Baron. It was edited by Glenn O'Brien and published by Warner Books, Maverick and Callaway. The book features adult content including softcore pornography and simulations of sexual acts including sadomasochism.

Madonna developed Sex after Judith Regan of Simon & Schuster publishers suggested a book of erotic photographs. She wrote it as a character named "Mistress Dita", inspired by 1930s film actress Dita Parlo. It was influenced by punk rock and fashion figures including Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe. The photos were shot in early 1992 in New York City and Miami, in locations including hotels, burlesque theaters, and city streets. The book includes cameos by actress Isabella Rossellini, rappers Big Daddy Kane and Vanilla Ice, model Naomi Campbell, gay porn star Joey Stefano, actor Udo Kier, and socialite Princess Tatiana von Fürstenberg. The cover is made of aluminium, spiral bound and wrapped in a boPET sheet.

Madonna's publishers were apprehensive about the release and the book's commercial potential. It was released on October 21, 1992, the day after Madonna's fifth studio album Erotica. A CD single was also packaged with the book which contained the song "Erotic", a song similar in composition to her similarly named single "Erotica". It sold over 150,000 copies on its first day in the United States, and topped the New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. In a matter of days, Sex went on to sell more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and remains the best- and fastest-selling coffee table book. It also remains as one of the most in-demand out-of-print publications of all time.

Sex attracted extensive media attention and backlash, but Madonna remained unapologetic. Though it initially received negative reviews from fans and critics, who felt she had "gone too far", later reviews have been more positive, with academics deeming it a defining phase in Madonna's career. Sex is noted for its social and cultural impact and is considered a bold postmodern feminist work.

Background and development

According to Giselle Benatar of Entertainment Weekly, two versions explain how Madonna came up with the idea for the book. One is that she conceived the idea of an erotic photography book during the shooting of the film A League of Their Own in the summer of 1991. By the end of the meeting Madonna had agreed "in principle" to do a book titled Madonna's Book of Erotica and Sexual Fantasies. She told Regan that DeMann would call her and work out the book's details. However, Madonna never got back to Regan who assumed she did not want to go ahead with the idea.

Sexs stylized, sado-masochistic look had a range of influences from punk rock, to early fashion iconoclasts like Guy Bourdin and his surrealism, and Helmut Newton. Photographs from Brassaï's 1933 book Paris de nuit (Paris by Night) also inspired several of the book's series of images. but she changed her mind when promotion for Spike Lee's film Malcolm X began. (It was released three weeks after the book). She would go on to tell Vogue magazine: "We were gonna call it X [...] but then the whole thing with the Malcolm X movie started. At first I thought, 'Fuck it, it's a really good symbol and I thought of it first'. But I realized it might be confusing or look like I was copying Spike [Lee]. Besides, Sex is almost as powerful: it's universal, it doesn't need translation – and it's only two letters more than X."

Madonna hired top-notch talent for the book's development, fashion photographer Steven Meisel, editor Glenn O'Brien, make-up artist Francois Nars and hairstylist Paul Cavaco. One morning during the four-day Florida shoot Madonna was prancing naked around her 14-bedroom house in Miami when someone jokingly suggested she go out on the street, which she did on two occasions – topless with Vanilla Ice and completely nude while pretending to hitchhike. According to Baron on the street "cars screeched to a halt, motorists whistled, and one entranced cyclist fell off his bike". Sex has 128 pages and is spiral bound with an aluminium cover that has the word "Sex" stamped in the middle The front page shows Madonna against a sky blue backdrop. Three different types of paper were used for the printing. Madonna and Baron & Baron Inc. (consisting of Fabien Baron and the photographer Siung Fat Tjia), who also collaborated with her designing the cover art for her fifth studio album, Erotica, oversaw the design. As this was Maverick's first project, the packaging was crucial. Madonna had no faith in Warner Book's "mass-market" publication process, however, so Baron suggested they transfer the packaging job to Nicholas Callaway's bespoke Callaway Editions. The company bought about of aluminium, roughly a pound for each book. The designers oversaw the production of the front and back covers, which were stamped and anodized while the aluminium was rolling on a press. Throughout Sex, Madonna offers poems, stories, and essays. She used the pseudonym "Mistress Dita" as an homage to German actress Dita Parlo; her friends in the stories are Bunny, Dex, Stella, Chiclet and Stranger.

Like the text—which was mostly printed on the photographs—they are highly sexual and depict nudity, simulations of sexual acts, bondage, homosexuality and analingus, with accessories such as knives, whips, masks and chains; model Naomi Campbell, gay porn star Joey Stefano, actor Udo Kier, socialite Princess Tatiana von Fürstenberg, and nightclub owner Ingrid Casares and unknown models are featured in the book. Its heterosexual photos involve only Madonna and Vanilla Ice. Dita also points out "A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want". Since they recovered stolen pictures during the making of Sex, Madonna thanked the FBI for "rescuing photographs that would have made J. Edgar Hoover roll over" in the book's credits.

Publication and promotion

The book's imminent release caused a great deal of controversy. One photo showed a nude Madonna wearing a rabbit's tail, shaving the pubic hair of a naked man, and cavorting outdoors with a dog, suggesting bestiality. Indian customs officials said the book offended the country's public morality. The Press Trust of India (PTI), India's domestic news agency, quoted a top customs official as saying the book would be seized under a section of the Customs Act prohibiting entry of indecent literature. Citizens of Alexandria, Louisiana, filed a complaint with the city's police department on behalf of the Rapides Parish Chapter of the American Family Association, claiming Sex violated Louisiana's anti-obscenity laws. U.S. Southern Baptists did not want their Bibles printed on the same printing presses as Sex and threatened to stop doing business with the printer RR Donnelley. The Nashville-based Baptist Sunday School Board, a division of the Southern Baptist Convention, reviewed their $2.1 million ($ in dollars) printing contract with Donnelley. Board President James Draper said he was infuriated Donnelley printed "such an obscene book". Entertainment Tonight reported Madonna had initiated the mayhem with the explicit content in the music video for "Erotica", walking bare breasted at designer Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion show and posing nude in Vanity Fair magazine. A writer for The Sacramento Bee said that since the press wanted "controversy", Madonna was willing to give them "fodder" with her "antiques".

Madonna claimed she was publishing Sex "to liberate America — free us all of our hang-ups". It was rumored that Time Warner was nervous about the book's release, however, in an interview with Vanity Fair, William Sarnoff, president of Warner Books, said he felt Madonna "should pursue all avenues of creativity as she defines it". The Warner company said they would make sure Sex reached its target audience. They reminded the public the book was safely wrapped in a Mylar bag to prevent in-store peeping and contained a warning label. She dressed as Little Bo Peep carrying a stuffed toy lamb. One of the few promotions she did, however, was to appear on the cover of the October edition of Vogue, dressed in "Hippie trip" fashion. These photographs were taken by Meisel. On October 22, 1992, MTV aired a special called The Day in Madonna, hosted by Kurt Loder (a pun on the title of their daily show The Day in Rock). It profiled the release of Madonna's Sex and her album Erotica, even taking the book to the streets to allow people, including a sex therapist and a group of real-life New York City dominatrices, to view it. MTV also interviewed people who had looked at the book on the day of its release at the HMV music store in New York City. To celebrate its release, the store held a Madonna look-alike contest and set up a booth where people could view the book for one dollar a minute, with the proceeds going to Lifebeat, the music industry organization founded to help fund AIDS research.

Critical response

Sex has also become an important book in the LGBT community. Mark Blankenship, of the LGBT-oriented website New Now Next said that "literature changed forever" with the publishing of Sex. Madonna's portrayal of lesbian love scenes in the book sparked debates about her own sexual orientation. This was an adjunct to her public relationship with comedian Sandra Bernhard with whom she visited lesbian nightclubs and partied. The LGBT community felt it was an important portrayal for them. They debated whether Madonna was "ripping" them off for publicity. Carolin Grace of Diva said: "Madonna became meaningful in the early nineties, when Sex came out, and at that point lesbian culture was really changing." The author felt that despite the courageous premise of genuine exploration of queer sex, the book crossed over into pornography and was a wrong portrayal for the community, while being flippant and commercial.

In 2017, Matthew Jacobs from the HuffPost wrote that it was "an audacious thesis statement, calculated enough to piss people off but seemly enough to maintain artistic integrity. No one today would dare emulate it", calling it "the most radical career move a pop star has ever made".

30th anniversary Art Basel exhibition and Christie's auction

From November 29 to December 4, 2022, Madonna partnered with Yves Saint Laurent for an art pop-up exhibition titled Sex by Madonna, at Art Basel in Miami Beach. Curated by Madonna and Anthony Vaccarello, large format prints from the book were shown in a temporarily constructed art gallery on the beach. 800 copies of the Sex book were re-issued, with a handful personally signed by Madonna. The price ranged from $1500–3000 and the signed copies were held up for auction, to raise proceeds for Raising Malawi. Various celebrities attended the event.

On May 10, 2023, Christie's announced a collaborative auction on October 6, 2023, with Madonna and Steven Meisel titled Madonna x Meisel – the SEX photographs. The auction will feature over 40 photographs that will go on sale, with proceeds going to Madonna's charity Raising Malawi. Darius Himes, Christie's Deputy Chairman describes the photos as sitting "at a moment in art history of the late 20th century that both summarizes a moment, playful and prescient, and hints at the future of public stardom driven by image-conscious figures. These images are nothing short of brilliant".

Sex has also become an object of modern culture references. American performance artist Ann Magnuson, who worked with Madonna on the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan, released a parody of the book's photo sessions, where she simulated sex with a giant stuffed bear. In 2010, writer-performer Greg Scarnici released a book titled Sex in Drag, which featured over 70 images parodying photos in Sex. In a deleted scene from a 1993 episode ("Krusty Gets Kancelled") of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, aired as part of "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", Krusty the Clown attempts to market a book like Sex to resolve his financial woes. He is seen in a suggestive pose on the front cover. Unlike Madonna, however, Krusty apparently never appeared fully nude, as he quickly claimed that he used a body double.

In 2008, People magazine ranked Madonna's look and attire at the Sex pre-release party as one of her 50 Looks We Can't Forget. In April 2012, a nude picture of Madonna taken by Meisel was put up for sale. An outtake from the book, it features a naked Madonna sporting bleach-blonde hair and dark eye make-up; lying on a bed and partially covered by a sheet, she is smoking a cigarette. An unnamed collector purchased it for almost US$24,000 ($ in dollars). In 2015, Rolling Stone included the book on its list of 20 Great Moments in Rock Star Nudity. Author Keith Harris wrote that "no celebrity had ever commanded control over her own naked image so audaciously".

Notes

References

  • Steven Meisel, Madonna, Sex book at Achtung Photography
  • Miami Photographer Hit Paydirt With Topless Madonna Shots at Adweek
  • full version (pdf) in the Open Source section of the Internet Archive