Mary Corse

She is best known for her experimentation with radiant surfaces in minimalist painting, incorporating materials that reflect light such as glass microspheres. Corse initially attended University of California, Santa Barbara starting in 1963. She later moved on to study at Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), earning her B.F.A. in 1968.

Mary Corse studied at Chouinard Art Institute. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is visual arts, painting and art of sculpture. Wassily Kandinsky is recorded as an influence. Work by Mary Corse is recorded in the collections of Seattle Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art.

• Name — Mary Corse • Born — 1945 • Birthplace — Berkeley, California • Known for — Painting • Training — Chouinard Art Institute B.F.A • Movement — Light and Space • Notable Works — White Light Painting

In the mid-1960s, during her time at Chouinard Art Institute, Mary Corse developed an interest in white monochrome paintings, favoring the controlled, geometric style of Minimalism. At the same time, she began to make shaped canvases paintings as well as three-dimensional works, for which she assembled columns out of plywood and joint compound that were then painted with white acrylic paint and sanded to remove any trace of her brushwork. In 1966, Corse started a series of works that encased fluorescent bulbs in Plexiglas boxes. In 1968, Corse became interested in attempting to move these light boxes away from the wall without cords, necessitating the use of a Tesla coil, which supports wireless electricity. Corse completed courses in quantum physics at the University of Southern California in order to earn certification to handle large Tesla coils for these works. Also in 1968, she began to embed glass microspheres (tiny reflective beads commonly used to brighten highway lines) in her paintings by layering them over white acrylic paint. The paintings in the White Light Series are "highly responsive to their environments and reveal internal complexities when lighting conditions fluctuate or viewers change their positions." Because of their capacity for transformation, the White Light paintings reflect Corse's interest in the personal and subjective nature of perception. Unlike in her earlier sculptures and shaped canvas works, the paintings in the White Light Series embrace the brushstroke, revealing Corse's hand in the works. White Light paintings from this early period often were often composed as grids, or as single microsphere-painted fields with contrasting flat white corners. Corse moved from Downtown Los Angeles to Topanga Canyon in 1970 after the birth of her first child. This transition prompted new explorations into materials and processes, most notably in her experimentation with ceramic, as well as small black acrylic squares which she applied in acrylic on canvas. For the Black Earth Series, begun in 1978, Corse molded slabs of clay off a sizable flat rock near her Topanga studio, creating large tiles which were then fired and painted with opaque black glaze. The series was conceptualized as a foil to her microsphere paintings, acting as a grounding strategy for Corse after a decade of White Light works. In order to make the Black Earth works, Corse personally built her own extra-large updraft kiln on her Topanga property. Corse returned again to the White Light Series - over her decades-long career Corse experimented with different compositional formats, scales, forms, and colors within the series. Perhaps the most celebrated and elusive offshoot of the paintings is the White Light Inner Band series, an effect achieved through a new technique of painting with glass microspheres. Begun in 1996, the series is characterized by a defined interior band that emerges from within the white field of microspheres and disappears as the viewer walks along the length of the work. As Whitney Museum curator Kim Conaty explains in the catalogue for Mary Corse: A Survey in Light, the Inner Bands "...insist upon the active viewing experience [Corse] seeks. They demonstrate that a monochrome, destabilized by the viewer's perception of its shifting surface, can take on many distinct states."

Corse's work has been featured in several historically significant exhibitions including Venice in Venice, a collateral exhibition created by Nyehaus in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) as well as Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970 (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany, 2011) and Phenomenal: California Light and Space (Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2011) both of which were included as a part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945–1980. In June 2018, the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited Mary Corse: A Survey in Light, which will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in July 2019. Her work was included in the 2024 exhibition Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).

Corse was awarded the Cartier Foundation award (1993), the Theodoran Award by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1971), and the New Talent Award by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1967). In 1975, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.