MADONNA "HARD CANDY"

Before "Hard Candy," her 11th studio album, due out Tuesday, Madonna had never before opened her legs for an album cover. Two decades ago, her patchouli-scented belly adorned the sleeve of the intimate "Like a Prayer," and in 2005 she showed a bit of derriere for the disco-nostalgic "Confessions on a Dance Floor." She's played with self-exposure in her scandalous 1992 book, "Sex," and in plenty of videos. But now the mistress of organized fantasy has put out, front and center.Taken by her frequent collaborator Steven Klein (whose spread-eagle shots of Madge have appeared in magazines, including this month's "Interview," and art galleries), the photograph shows its subject sitting back like a fighter in a corner. She's corset-clad, wrestling belt around her waist, binding her hands with black tape. Her tongue registers more strongly than her half-closed eyes; her hair is styled in an androgynous pompadour. The background looks like cracked peppermint. She is Venus and Mars, the embodiment of sex as war. SOURCE:LATIMES