Installation view of Brigid Berlin: The Heaviest, curated by Alison M. Gingeras; Photo by Argenis Apolinario; Courtesy Vito Schnabel Gallery. Needlepoint pillows by Brigid Berlin; ©Vincent Fremont/Vincent Fremont Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
Daughter of the chairman of Hearst publications and his socialite wife Honey, and a deliciously misbehaving traitor to her class, Brigid Polk was doubly delectable for the early Warhol, who famously fed on the high and the low but had little appetite for anything in between. This archaeological gem, culled from the archive of the Pop artist’s longtime confidante, teased out a significant ripple in the expanded field of Warholian social performance and made a case for Polk as a protofeminist and a singular artist in her own right.