Mary Corse

Private Collection, Singapore (acquired directly from the artist in 2014)

London, Galerie Almine Rech, Plastic Show, February - March 2017

This work is in very good and sound condition and in good working order. There is evidence of light handling with some handling marks visible along the edges, the lower corners darkening with age, and some faint scratches are visible on the lateral edges. A very faint horizontal crack to the painted wood is visible just below center on both sides of the Plexiglas, possibly inherent to the nature of the wood support. There is also a horizontal inconsistency to the paint approximately 1.5-inches from the bottom edge of the wood which extends the entire length of the wood and appears to be the result of light retouching. Under close inspection of the lateral edges, a fine horizontal crack is visible on each side where the two pieces of wood meet and a few pinpoint and unobtrusive accretions are visible.
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By way of a singular fusion of conceptual rigor and scientific experimentation, Mary Corse began in the mid-1960s to forge a unique path through the topography of Minimalism. Fresh from her undergraduate studies at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, Corse at first sought to achieve what she considered to be the 'objective truth' of painting by removing any indication of human touch and prizing absolute flatness as a cardinal value. Executed in 1966, Untitled (White Light Series) is an early paradigm of Corse’s most transformative and innovative work, and marks a seminal turning point in her career. One of only two extant works from the White Light Series, the present work is the only example remaining in private hands as its companion was recently gifted to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Never having appeared before at auction, Untitled (White Light Series) is a truly significant and rare masterwork by one of the leading, and under recognized, trailblazers of the Minimalist aesthetic in the second half of the 20th century.

Having graduated from Chouinard, and building her own studio in Topanga Canyon, Corse embarked in earnest upon her quest of breaking the genre of painting down to its most elemental state. She began by physically sanding down her works’ painted surfaces in an effort to remove all traces of brushstroke. What she was left with was a series of white monochrome paintings, which developed into a series in which she focused on shaped canvases. Throughout this early experimental period, Corse was persistent in her search for a format and artistic construction that would allow her to properly explore the properties of light and space. While her entirely flat white monochrome surfaces conveyed an element of luminosity by virtue of their white pigment’s naturally reflective properties, she wasn’t quite satisfied. By building out her supports so that they appeared box-like and projected forth from the wall, Corse sought to further ‘objectify’ her paintings. From there, she turned to physical light sources, letting fluorescent tubing improve upon the work of the monochrome paint by emitting a steady white glow from within her designed canvas-box constructions. In an effort to further liberate her work from the confines of the gallery wall, Corse began to use Plexiglas in the fabrication of her boxes so that they appeared free-floating, suspended in space instead of tethered dependently to the wall. The final step in this journey toward Corse’s first career breakthrough moment, the construction of Untitled (White Light Series), was to make invisible the wires that were still noticeably suspending the illuminated construction; to accomplish this, Corse identified the need for a high frequency generator that she could inset into the wall behind the piece, thereby hiding it from the viewer. The finished work would then be hung wireless on clear microfilament.

Untitled (White Light Series) brilliantly showcases the success of Corse’s technical experimentation and scientific prowess (in order to procure the necessary parts for these elaborate constructions from a distributor called Edmund Scientific, Corse had to take a course in Physics and pass an exam). As one approaches this stunning object, it truly appears to float weightlessly in front of, and not in any apparent way seem connected to, the wall that recedes from focus behind it. As autonomous and sculptural as the present work may appear, however, Corse was consistent in referring to the light box pieces as ‘light paintings,’ saying: “They were very thin, and I always thought that the essence of painting is not about the paint. I was more interested in the flatness, the light, and the space. To me that was what painting was about. It didn’t have to be made out of paint and canvas. It’s about the meaning and the experience…I wanted to put the light in the painting” (the artist interviewed by Alex Bacon in "In Conversation: Mary Corse with Alex Bacon,” The Brooklyn Rail, 3 June 2015).

It was while she was taking the physics class she needed in order to procure her light box and high frequency generator materials that Corse started to develop an interest for quantum physics; and it was in her studies of quantum physics that she, perhaps paradoxically, came to a realization that fundamentally shifted the focus of her practice: “All of this stuff started coming together and I realized that there is no objective truth,” Corse recalls, “Subjectivity and perception is a part of reality, and that’s what sent me back to painting, back to the brushstroke, because you can’t get rid of subjectivity” (ibid.) Following this theoretical breakthrough, Corse discovered the material that she continues to use in her paintings today: glass microspheres, which are minute prismatic beads most commonly found embedded into highway pavement. Once she began incorporating glass microspheres into her paintings, Corse did not create any further light box works. As such, Untitled (White Light Series) is an exceptionally special and singular exemplar of a critical stage in Mary Corse’s artistic exploration and, by extension, an archetype of Minimalist art.