Artwork
Brigid Berlin is also famous for her prolific art, which has been argued by many to have been both influential to Andy Warhol's artwork and simultaneously overshadowed by Warhol's celebrity and own artwork. Berlin's "Tit Paintings" were artworks created using her bare breasts. Berlin would dip her breasts into multiple colored paints and then create a "print" by pressing them down onto canvas/paper. The Tit Paintings are arguably Berlin's most infamous work and were exhibited by Jane Stubbs at a gallery on Madison Avenue in 1996. On occasion Berlin would publicly create Tit Paintings, integrating visual art and performance art that "is totally not about nudity, this is about, you know, art." She performed this act live at the Gramercy International Art Fair. After experiencing the performance, filmmaker John Waters later commented, "I think that she's the most un-self-conscious nude person... She has great self-esteem for a fat girl."
Another of Berlin's art projects was her series of themed "Trip" books. "When we were all on amphetamine in the sixties this is what we used to do – would be to draw in our trip books and I could spend my life drawing circles and filling the circle with circles and more dots and more circles around it and then coloring them all with Doctor Martin's watercolor dyes." The most famous of Berlin's trip books was her Cock Book. The Cock Book was initially a large, blank-page book entitled Topical Bible which she purchased from a shop on Broadway. "Topical" was somewhat whimsically imagined to rhyme with "cockical", so she decided to make it her Cock Book. Brigid schlepped her Cock Book around with her when she went out at night to places like Max's Kansas City or the Factory and got others to fill each page with their rendition of a penis. Brigid was not particularly selective about who drew in it, because she was consumed with the idea of having it filled and completed. Contributors range from artists like Basquiat to Jane Fonda, whose cock adorns a matchstick pearl necklace, to Leonard Cohen, who opted out of drawing a cock, instead writing "let me be the shy one in your book". Berlin herself drew in the Cock Book, as did Andy Warhol, who refused to sign his proper name or draw a proper cock. The Cock Book was an artwork and entertainment for Brigid who "had more fun doing that than anything I've ever done in my life. I would come home, stoned from being up at Max's and I would sit on the floor and work on the book. " Brigid's Cock Book recently sold for $175,000 to artist Richard Prince.
Both Berlin and Warhol used the medium of Polaroid photography obsessively, and are said to have been very competitive in the Polaroid film department, whether over the best equipment or the best film. In 1969–1970 German art dealer Heiner Friedrich did a small showing of Berlin's work called Polaroids and Tapes and created a catalogue for the work of the same name. The experimental nature of Berlin's double-exposed Polaroids transcend the static, emotionless "icon" polaroids of Warhol's, clearly showing the power of her personal vision and photographic style. Common subject matter of Berlin's polaroids are self-portraits, Warhol Superstars, other artists and celebrities, and Off Broadway one-woman shows.
Brigid still suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, a theme that she often explores in her artwork.
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