Mary Corse: A Survey in Light
Mary Corse: A Survey in Light
Mary Corse’s first solo museum survey is a long overdue examination of this singular artist’s career. Initially trained as an abstract painter, Corse emerged in the mid-1960s as one of the few women associated with the West Coast Light and Space movement. She shared with her contemporaries a deep fascination with perception and with the possibility that light itself could serve as both subject and material of art. This focused exhibition will highlight critical moments of experimentation as Corse engaged with tropes of modernist painting while charting her own course through studies in quantum physics and complex investigations into a range of “painting” materials. The survey will bring together for the first time Corse’s key bodies of work, including her early shaped canvases, freestanding sculptures, and light encasements that she engineered in the mid-1960s, as well as her breakthrough White Light Paintings, begun in 1968, and the Black Earth Series that she initiated after moving in 1970 from downtown Los Angeles to Topanga Canyon, where she lives and works today.
This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Los Angeles presentation is made possible in part by Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Lisson Gallery, Pace Gallery, and Marietta Wu and Thomas Yamamoto. Additional support is provided by the Wallis Annenberg Director's Endowment Fund.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony and Lee Shaw, Kitzia and Richard Goodman, Jerry and Kathleen Grundhofer, Meredith and David Kaplan, and Jeffrey Saikhon, with generous annual funding from Terry and Lionel Bell, the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Kevin J. Chen, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Mary and Daniel James, David Lloyd and Kimberly Steward, Kelsey Lee Offield, David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., Andy Song, Lenore and Richard Wayne, and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.
Image: Mary Corse, Untitled (White Arch Inner Band Series), 1996, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art Council, New Talent Purchase Award by exchange, © Mary Corse, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
- Jul 28–Nov 11, 2019
- BCAM, Level 3: Nathanson Gallery
This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Los Angeles presentation is made possible in part by Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Lisson Gallery, Pace Gallery, and Marietta Wu and Thomas Yamamoto. Additional support is provided by the Wallis Annenberg Director's Endowment Fund.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony and Lee Shaw, Kitzia and Richard Goodman, Jerry and Kathleen Grundhofer, Meredith and David Kaplan, and Jeffrey Saikhon, with generous annual funding from Terry and Lionel Bell, the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Kevin J. Chen, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Mary and Daniel James, David Lloyd and Kimberly Steward, Kelsey Lee Offield, David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., Andy Song, Lenore and Richard Wayne, and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.
Image: Mary Corse, Untitled (White Arch Inner Band Series), 1996, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art Council, New Talent Purchase Award by exchange, © Mary Corse, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
Media
Ahead of her first solo museum survey exhibition, the team of the Whitney Museum visited Mary Corse in her studio in Topanga Canyon, California.
