/ Portrait of Andy Warhol and his entourage of Superstars by Cecil Beaton, 1969. Left to right: Brigid Berlin, Candy Darling, Warhol and Ultra Violet /
Farewell to one of the last
surviving Warhol Superstars (and last links to old-school New York bohemia) Brigid
Berlin (sometimes known as Brigid Polk, 6 September 1939 – 17 July 2020), who
has died aged 80.
Like fellow Superstar Edie Sedgwick, Berlin was the wayward
daughter from an old money high society family (her father was the chairman of
the Hearst media empire) who jettisoned the role of debutante
ordained for her to gleefully letting her freak flag fly at the Royal House of
Warhol in the sixties and seventies instead. As Berlin herself explained, “My
mother wanted me to be a slim respectable socialite … instead I became an
overweight troublemaker.”
/ Portrait of Brigid Berlin by Gerard Malanga, 1971 /
An outsized character in every sense (at one point
her weight topped 300 pounds), Berlin is a ferocious, abrasive, frequently naked,
sometimes scary and often hilariously funny presence in the underground cinema
of Andy Warhol. Her performances in films like Chelsea Girls (1966), Imitation
of Christ (1967), and Bad (1977) are rivetingly obnoxious. Berlin was also
a notorious speed freak, who terrorized the unsuspecting in the VIP backroom of
bohemian haunt Max’s Kansas City by jabbing them with her hypodermic needle of
amphetamines. (Warhol films Berlin furiously ranting and shooting-up speed in
Chelsea Girls).
/ Dual Polaroid portrait of Berlin with fellow Warhol Superstar Nico, circa early seventies /
Berlin was also an artist in her own right, using the mediums
of Polaroid photography and “tit prints” (dipping her own breasts into paint
and pressing them onto paper). Until Warhol’s death, Berlin (who’d kicked amphetamines
by this point) worked as the receptionist at his Interview magazine – albeit an
extremely unconventional one. (She preferred to eat candy, knit and fuss over
her pet dogs than answer telephones). It’s undeniably disillusioning and
bizarre to learn that as she aged, the rebellious Berlin gradually reverted to
type, ultimately becoming every bit as conservative as her patrician socialite
mother. Towards the end of her life, Berlin was even a Trump supporter! I did
warm to her, though, when I read that in Berlin’s reclusive housebound later years,
she “cleaned obsessively, then cleaned some more.” For me, the unapologetically
butch and androgynous Berlin exuded a “big dyke energy”, but the otherwise thorough
New York Times obituary doesn’t touch on her sexual preferences or romantic life. Director
John Waters was an admirer (Berlin made cameo appearances in Waters’ films Serial
Mom (1994) and Pecker (1998) and he wrote the introduction to her coffee table book
of Polaroid photography). In the NY Times obit he sweetly recalls, “I was
scared of her in the best way.” Berlin is the subject of the 2000
documentary Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story, which I clearly need to
see.
I believe she was with gerard malanga at one point circa 1970
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