art: Morton Bartlett
October 1, 2007He sculpted children in various poses - reading, crying, playing - and then he took photographs of the sculptures. When the works became public, the artist was overwhelmed by the praise and attention, and packed the sculptures away for 30 years.
Through the efforts of an art dealer, they were found again in 1993. But Bartlett was primarily a photographer. A dedicated collector set about trying to locate slides of the sculptures, and found them via eBay.
A NY Times article examines possible reasons why Bartlett chose to sculpt such lifelike children, and in the process, compares him to Lewis Carroll, Joseph Cornell and a group of photographers who specialized in setup photography.
