Like Henry Darger, fellow Mixed-Up Childhood artist Morton Bartlett is known as a reclusive self-taught artist. Both lived alone and, through art, are thought to have created surrogate families; Darger worked with his Vivian girls while Bartlett's hobby was carving and photographing doll-like children.
Bartlett, who died in 1992 aged
83, was orphaned at the age of eight and never married. Although considered a self-taught or "outsider" artist, he was well-educated, having spent time at Harvard, and he worked as a commercial photographer for advertising and owned a printing business.
Mostly in secret, Bartlett spent 30 years (until about 1963) crafting a family of 15 anatomically correct figures, which he called his "sweethearts". He then photographed them in different poses, creating more than 200 images that were found in his basement after he died.
Carved from plaster, most are girls aged 8-16, while three are eight-year-old boys. For reference, he collected anatomy books and growth charts from children's shoe shops to create scale drawings of children at monthly intervals of development. He made clothes, wigs and accessories for them, including pets, and brought them to life by photographing them in home-made studio sets.
Bartlett's creations are exquisitely detailed studies, showing his figures in a range of scenarios and mood. Each has their own personality and extensive wardrobe to match. Some appear to cheekily make eye-contact with the camera; others coyly look away or stare into the distance, but never with the fixed blankness of mannequins or dolls that were on the market at the time.
They are depicted reading, singing, dancing, laughing, crying or knowingly posing for the camera in their best dress, and sometimes with an ambiguous hint of an erotic pose. But mostly this is the rosy-cheeked world of mid-20th century America as seen in catalogues and sit-coms, which is the only real experience of family situations that, like Darger, Bartlett could draw from.
Also appearing in Mixed-Up Childhood, Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry, who designs his own frocks for his alter-ego Claire, is a great fan of both Darger and Bartlett, admiring the intricate internal worlds they created.
"Art is childhood trauma manifesting itself later in life," says Perry.
Exhibition
*Who: Morton Bartlett, in Mixed-Up Childhood
*Where and when: New Gallery, to May 29
