Corporate Executive Wife's Service Award Bracelet
Artist
Nina Bentley
(b. 1939)
Date1999
Mediumsculpture; Assemblage sculpture, plated silver
Dimensions42 x 42 x 24 in.
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Jennifer Bentley
Object number2001.32
DescriptionTwelve silver-plated teapots on a heavy industrial chain, (pl.7) exhibited on a forty-two-inch white pedestal that mocks a jeweler's tray, are the substance of this astonishing piece, which the artist considered her most disturbing at the time it was made.(3) It was inspired by the well-publicized divorce of Lorna and Gary Wendt, a former General Electric executive, in 1998. Offered only 10 percent of her husband's earnings, Mrs. Wendt chose to fight for her rightful due, eventually receiving a court judgment of twenty million dollars. She went on to found the Equality in Marriage Institute and now lectures to women across the country about their rights. The bracelet was later duplicated for Mrs. Wendt's collection. Bentley, though happily married, spoke from a certain level of experience when she commented, "Often the one who holds the ladder her husband climbs is the corporate wife."(4) The bracelet brings to mind Pop Art's glorification of common objects and Oldenberg's play with scale in particular. Yet whereas Oldenberg made small, common objects mammoth, Bentley uses objects in real scale, here mimicking much smaller ones. The contortion of the "Bracelet" is like that of Alice in Wonderland, complete with allusions to Victorian tea parties rather than to the world of 1960s mass production. Dependent on its title to give the viewer guidance to its meaning, Bentley's piece readily engages the imagination, mixing narratives gleaned from life or from television programs with visions of a woman who might actually wear the piece. An acerbic critique of the institution of marriage, it reminds us that even that level of economic ease does little to ensure gender equality.
SB
NOTES
3. Judith Marks-White, "Artist's Showcase: The Whimsical World of Nina Bentley," "Westport" (December, 2001): 110.
4. Quoted in ibid.
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