This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  A craftsman, sculptor and photographer, Morton Bartlett was self taught as an artist, and a "drop out" from formal education, as he left Harvard University after two years of enrollment. Retrospectively he has been called an "outsider" artist as his creative output did not conform to any 'school of art'.
Among his jobs were that of free-lance photographer, service station attendant, traveling furniture salesman, gift card designer and printing business owner. "But privately, his obsession was creating an extraordinary collection of sculpture of dressed but eerily life-like children which are like large dolls. After his death, the collection was discovered intact and exhibited by Marion Harris." (Falk, 224).
He grew up as an orphan and his state of being alone pesisted throughout his life as he never married and always lived alone. In 1936, he began to make dolls, which became his signature artistic work. He was inspired a book, The Doll, by Hans Bellmer and published in Paris. For the next 25 years he carved and then dressed numerous dolls of which 15 survive. He also took photos of each of them, which is a documentation of about 200 photos, which were found after his death.
His handling of his subject matter is described in a review of work by Bartlett, Lee Godie and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein at the Intuit Gallery in Chicago:
"The creations of Boston photographer Morton Bartlett (1909-1992) reflect a similarly private passion, albeit of an even more solitary kind. The intensity is embodied as much in the anatomically correct prepubescent dolls he created as in the photographs he made of them. It is surmised that the 12 half-scale, extremely lifelike girls and three boys, together with clothes he sewed by hand, were a surrogate family for Bartlett, an orphan and lifelong bachelor. The Intuit exhibition includes one of the dolls and some spare heads, in addition to the display of his photographs. One might question what impact the photographs would have had without the dolls.
. . . Bartlett's photographs on their own seem conventional, the charming output of a talented hobbyist. They do not elicit the same feeling as the other photographs in the show but, rather, are more in tune with The Lonely Doll series of photographic children's books by Dare Wright published in the late 1950s and 1960s. Each book followed the adventures of Edith (the doll) and her two bear pals, using black-and-photographs taken in real-world settings.
Bartlett's pictures are invested with a dimension apparently lacking in Wright's books, since it is presumed that they were part of a lonely man's effort to create an alternative reality for himself. That ties them to Von Bruenchenhein's efforts to fabricate his own world, but the doll photographs are no match for Marie. Even when Von Bruenchenhein veers closest to cheesecake, his artistic depth separates his pictures from a Betty Page image in a way that Bartlett's photographs cannot be distinguished from The Lonely Doll. Wright's books may be more whimsical and less dramatically detailed, but both series are more illustration than art. Without the associated narratives, their appeal would be diminished. In Bartlett's case, this means both the imputed narrative of the remarkable dolls and his own lonely life story. (Actually, the life of model and fashion photographer Wright, were it better known, might add a similar frisson to The Lonely Doll.) This is not to say that Bartlett's photos lack artistic merit or are unappealing. But neither are they stunningly creative, either as individual images or as a body of photography.
Most pertinent to the Intuit show, it's not obvious in what sense they represent outsider photography. Perhaps Bartlett qualifies as an outsider to the extent that he does not appear to have been engaged with the fine art world. But much of the power of outsider art comes from the striving of an artist to create despite a lack of training in techniques of artistic expression. Bartlett, a former professional photographer, would have faced no such struggle making his photos. In fact, he seems to turn a certain kind of outsider art cliché on its head. Here we have eccentric personal history investing significance in technically accomplished work rather than being used to legitimate art whose execution is offputtingly primitive.
One needs to know the whole story to make Bartlett appear as any kind of an outsider -- the dolls, his eccentric bachelor life, his apparent fascination with prepubescent girls and the presumed obsession required to achieve the level of detail visible in both the dolls and the photographs. While few of Bartlett's photographs are sexually charged, the explicit nature of the dolls he made and photographed gives the work an odd, erotic aura that might not otherwise exist. The Lonely Doll parallel makes it hard not to wonder, though, how fascinating the Bartlett pictures would seem without our culture's paranoia about the sexual abuse of children.
. . . Now, after years of growing interest in various forms of self-taught and outsider art, Bartlett at last can be recognized as more than a hobbyist."
In 1998, a CD album titled Phantom Engineer included the song, "Morton Barlett's Children" and was released by the performing group, Phantom Engineer.
Written by Lonnie Pierson Dunbier
Sources:
Inuit Gallery, http://www.interestingideas.com/out/photo.htm (From the Folk Art Society of America)
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
Wikipedia/Morton Bartlett. References include:
Marion Harris, Family Found: The Lifetime Obsession of Morton Bartlett
R. Turyner and D. Klochko, Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge
http://www.amazon.com/Morton-Bartletts-Children
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Biography from Christie's:
| "My hobby is sculpting in plaster. Its purpose is that of all proper hobbies--to let out urges that do not find expression in other channels" (M. Bartlett, Family Found, New York, 2002, p. 58).
Although Morton Bartlett attended college and worked as a freelance advertising photographer, his singular obsessions and working methods have caused him to be grouped with Self-Taught and Outsider art.
His work, created solely for his enjoyment, is one of the most intense and provocative of the genre. He created only 15 sculptures, a small number of masks and approximately 20 drawings. Each sculpture took well over a year to complete to the artist's satisfaction.
Additionally, he designed and created all of the clothing and hairpieces for his creations. He would dress up his sculptures in various poses and photograph them, creating a body of 200 vintage photographs. Incredibly life-like and expressive, Bartlett's work is equally disturbing and poignant, sweet and intense.
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