Untitled

Mary Corse intends for her monochromatic paintings to be immersive experiences. In 1968 the artist began a series of large-scale, white grid paintings, mixing acrylic paint with glass microspheres—a material used to give road signs and dividing lines their reflective look—to transform the flat canvas into a luminescent plane. The result encourages movement around the work’s surface, inviting us to engage with its projected light from a variety of angles and distances. Indeed, viewers must encounter it experientially, as it cannot accurately be captured in photographs. As Corse explained in an interview, “When I first started putting glass microspheres in paint, I was really putting the light inside the painting. I didn’t want to paint a picture of the experience of light—I wanted the painting to be the light experience itself.”