Ex Libris: Scars, by Brigid Polk

Gerard Malanga had two undescended testicles until he was 13 years old. We know this because nearly 30 years later he inked up his testes, the scar from corrective testicle descending surgery visible, and made a print of them for Brigid Polk, the artist, actress and Andy Warhol’s closest and most enduring friend. Malanga was one of several contributors to Polk’s 1971 ‘trip book’, the title she gave to her free-flowing diaristic art books, Scars. Most likely inspired by the huge scar Warhol received after being shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968, Polk spent the following years asking those who came through the revolving door of The Factory, and those in her own circle, to ink up their scars and make an impression on a page in her notebook with some information about the scar accompanied by a signature.

The notebook was turned into Scars, printed by Telegraph Books in 1972 in a very limited run. It remained out of print for the next 50 years until it was reissued by Waverly Press to mark its half-century. This type of bookmaking was not foreign territory for Polk but Scars is the most enduring of her imprint book works. A slight quarto, bound in a soft cover which, along with the endpapers, is a continuation of the work inside. Scars is a macabre yearbook of sorts, a documentation of the New York Downtown Class of ‘71 told through deeply personal histories. There is no writing by Polk in the book – no explanation of the concept or process – and much of the handwriting from the contributors is illegible to all those not experts in deciphering chicken scratch. So what we are left with is 80 odd pages of abstract renderings in thick black ink, representations of the pores of foreskins, the prints of thumbs, the curls of body hair decipherable and, rising out of the thick black ink, the raised white marks of body scars. These white marks tell specific and universal stories: stories of botched circumcisions (Buddy Wirtschafter), knife fights in High School (Brice Marden), unwanted pregnancies (Patti Smith), self-harm (Genevieve Waite), burns from a birthday cake (Rene Ricard) and attempted murders (Andy Warhol).

What is perhaps the most interesting feature of Scars, for my rudimentary mind at least, are the scars from those who have either slipped out of the public knowledge, were never part of it in the first place, or whose signatures are so indecipherable that we can’t even begin to guess who they belong to. Faced with total ignorance of the holder, the only thing we have to go on is their abstract scar and a short description of its origin. On the cover of the book, we have a large black oblong with thick white blotches of negative space running down its centre and the slight texture of folded skin on the lower left side. Above the imprint are the words ‘LEFT STOMACH GUNSHOT ‘51’ and below ‘SEE WHAT MY MOTHER DID TO ME!’. Not since Hemingway wrote For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn, has a short story been so short and so wildly effective. In the same hand and through the same body, printed in increasingly abstract shapes, we learn of the owner’s hip scar from a motorcycle accident, the presumed exit wound of a gunshot on their lower left back and, finally, of their seemingly botched circumcision under which is written ‘AND THIS IS ONE OF HER LITTLE DEEDS’. After many hours of trying to decipher the signature and trawling Warhol-dedicated forums, I am still left with no answers as to who the circumcised man shot by his mother is and now, I am somewhat pleased to remain in the dark. (Though, I would be forever grateful if any of you can provide answers).

Scars is such an effective artwork because Polk, whether intentionally or not, has created a new form of mixed-media storytelling. On each page, a muddled blot of black ink becomes a symbol; a marker of pain and a record of a moment in the holder’s life. In our wildly individualised society, everything is read as a type of portrait. But this is a radical rethinking of portrait-making, ahead of its time – it is a wonderful example of what good art books can do. It is talismanic. The diminutive size and lack of context to the content give it a profound mystery, the abstract, black, xeroxed images make it feel handmade and deeply personal. And it also forces personal reflection in the simplest way.

I have some mundane scars from childhood scraps and various medical procedures. I have lived with them so long that I hardly think of them, and when I do, I think of them as unimaginably dull. But isolated, they tell a deeply specific story of my life; one I don’t get to choose or curate. Scars might just be the most honest work of portraiture produced in the 20th century.