Guy and dolls - the life and works of Morton Bartlett - Critical Essay

ArtForum, Sept, 2003 by Laurie Simmons

Goodness, what crazy purchases were prompted by the poignant predilection Humbert had in those days for check weaves, bright cottons, frills, puffed-out short sleeves, soft pleats, snug-fitting bodices and generously full skirts! Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's, and what little girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? Did I have something special in mind? coaxing voices asked me. Swimming suits? We have them in all shades. Dream pink, frosted aqua, glans mauve, tulip red, oolala black. What about playsuits? Slips? No slips. Lo and I loathed slips.... Having moreover studied a midsummer sale book, it was with a very knowing air that I examined various pretty articles, sport shoes, sneakers, pumps of crushed kid for crushed kids.

--Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

Humbert Humbert was never more tender or seemingly plausible as a family man than when tending to Lolita's more mundane requirements. Shopping for clothes and comic books, managing sightseeing itineraries, or fetching ice cold cherry Cokes, he seemed almost the model dad, or at least the diligent guardian. Befuddled, bemused, and frustrated, he found himself ultimately overwhelmed by the mammoth task of caring for and feeding an adolescent girl.

When considering the life and works of Morton Bartlett one can't help but wonder about the care and feeding of the fifteen exquisite plaster children he constructed (and then photographed) in relative secrecy over the course of three decades. Bartlett, unlike Humbert, had to make his diminutive Lolitas from scratch, in fully realized detail, from their toenails up to their finely articulated tongues. Stacks of anatomy books, detailed measuring diagrams, and growth charts from children's shoe shops provided reference for Bartlett's scale drawings of children's development in monthly intervals from ages eight through sixteen. Once the figures were sculpted, Bartlett devoted himself to their maintenance and costuming, which involved hours of painting, sewing elaborately pleated skirts and smocked blouses, embroidering jackets, knitting cardigans, hats, scarves, and socks, and customizing wigs. Discovered in a Boston brownstone on their maker's death in 1992, the child figures (the last of which was made in 1963) seem to have been groomed primarily for cameo appearances in a group of uncanny, stunningly moody, and ultimately disturbing black-and-white photographs. This is where the story of Bartlett's "sweethearts" comes to life and where he parts company with a long tradition of doll collectors and doll-making hobbyists.

Bartlett, who died at the age of eighty-three, never married and lived alone his entire life. The dolls were a secret hobby, a project he shared with only a few close friends and the handyman neighbor who carried Bartlett's groceries up the stairs every Monday for almost twenty years. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Bartlett spent two years at Harvard and then led a rather unremarkable adult life trying to keep small businesses afloat. By all accounts he had no formal art training, yet he started his work life with freelance advertising photography and moved through a succession of art-related ventures--from manufacturing gift objects to publishing a crafts magazine. He eventually landed in his own printing business. Like many artists, his day jobs tended to support or relate to his private work, though he supported himself briefly as a gas station manager and furniture salesman and served a short stint in the army.

A two-page spread in Yankee Magazine (April 1962) titled "The Sweethearts of Mr. Bartlett" and a reference to his sculpting hobby in the 25th Anniversary Report of Harvard's class of 1932 were the only public mentions of his work during his lifetime, and his clandestine activities came to light only after his estate, which consisted mainly of the dolls, their clothing, and about two hundred photographs, was purchased by Marion Harris, an art and antiques dealer in Simsbury, Connecticut. Harris brought the work to public attention, first publishing the catalogue Family Found: The Lifetime Obsession of Morton Bartlett (Paul-Art Press, 1994) and then exhibiting the dolls and their apparel and many of the photos at the 1995 Outsider Art Fair in New York. Interestingly, Yankee Magazine presented Bartlett as a hobbyist who planned to exhibit his creations eventually. But unlike the typical mannequin- and doll-maker of his day, whose creatures revealed (when undressed) a kind of airbrushed genitalia, Bartlett chose to represent sexual characteristics as realistically as possible, even though he generally photographed his dolls' bodies fully clothed. Apparently he needed his children to meet exacting standards of verisimilitude before he could dress them tip and pose them.

The five essays in Harris's book look to Bartlett's childhood for an explanation of the impetus behind his peculiar approach to an already eccentric hobby. Great emphasis is placed on the fact that Bartlett, who was born in Chicago, was orphaned at the age of eight. Nothing is known of the circumstances of his parents' death except that he was soon adopted by a Massachusetts couple, Mr. and Mrs. Warren Goddard Bartlett. The prevailing conclusion is that the plaster "children" took the place of the family Bartlett never had.