(ON HOLD): PERREAULT, John. Cocks.

[New York, NY]: Privately published, 1970. Original work. 16mo. [141] pages. A unique volume gifted by John Perrault to Brigid (Polk) Berlin. Perrault was the chief art critic at the Village Voice who importantly championed the work of feminist and gay artists. Perreault was also an artist, first showing his paintings at Greenwich Village’s One Eleven Gallery in the mid-1960s. He was an innovative explorer, he re-purposed thrift store artworks and painted on top of them and often used untraditional media “to attack what he calls the art supplies racket” sand, toothpaste, instant coffee grounds in his works. Perreault also served as a subject for artists, including Alice Neel, whose John Perreault (1972) is now owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art. The portrait was painted for The Male Nude (1973), an exhibition that Perreault curated at the School of Visual Arts. He gifted this volume to Brigid Berlin, no doubt, in response to her own ‘tit book’ creations. Berlin, a Warholian superstar, and long time friend, was an obsessive recorder of events and people during her time as the central figure of Warhol’s entourage. An artist in her own right, indeed many have argued that she was highly influential to Warhol’s artwork, and once, in 1969, Warhol announced that all of his paintings were in fact the work of Berlin. Brigid enthusiastically followed this line when interviewed by Time. It was she who introduced Warhol to the Polaroid camera and tape recorder as ways of making art. Whole chapters of his 1975 book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, are transcriptions of her recorded speech, and almost every line in Pork, his 1971 play about a society family and their overweight, troublemaking daughter, came directly from Berlin. Tit Prints are arguably Berlin’s most infamous work and were exhibited by Jane Stubbs at a gallery on Madison Avenue in 1996. The prints were created by Berlin using her bare breasts. She did also, commencing in 1969, start to make books comprised of the tit impressions of visitor’s to Warhol’s Factory. This volume contains around 90 ink impressions of Perreault’s cock and occasional testicle, mirroring Berlin’s own tit books. The volume is inscribed “Cocks / for Bridgid [sic] / John Perreault / 7/70.” A very good copy in full black leather, by C.P. Leathercrafts (New York), raised bands, gilt dentelle inners, and gilt title and presentation lettering, COCKS: J. Perrault’s (sic) for B. Polk. A fantastic association linking via cocks and tits two influential players in the late sixties / early seventies New York art scene.