Mary Corse: A Survey in Light

at LACMA (through November 11)
Reviewed by Lita Barrie

Mary Corse is finally having her moment in a breakout role as the luminary of “light painting.” Although Corse has received critical acclaim since the sixties she has been overshadowed by male SoCal Light and Space artists. Interestingly, it took New York women curators to revise the canon with a fresh spin on Corse’s singular importance as the first light painter because she does not depict light as a subject but paints with light as her source material.

Mary Corse: A Survey of Light ( organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in association with LACMA), was first shown in New York, following soon after her exhibitions at DIA and London’s Lisson Gallery in 2018, and her career-spanning survey at Kayne Griffin Cocoran Gallery in 2017. Clearly, the time is ripe for an overdue examination of Corse’s singularity that could re-contextualize her accurately, and create a new foundation for future scholarship. Whitney curators Kim Conaty and Melinda Lang organized this traveling survey and major monograph like an intervention to show that although Corse shared a fascination with the perception of light with the canonical group she differed by approaching light “through” painting.