Staging California in Early Hollywood considers how Southern California functioned as both a real environment and a cinematic invention in the early twentieth century. During the Great Depression, many plein air painters transitioned into Hollywood scenic, graphic, and backdrop work, where their deep knowledge of the local landscape enabled them to make the region a stand-in for locations around the world.

The exhibition highlights the central role of plein air painting in shaping the visual language of early filmmaking. It also foregrounds these artists’ largely uncredited artistic labor within the powerful studio system, alongside key innovations in sound and color that transformed cinema in the 1920s and 1930s.

Drawn almost entirely from across the UC Irvine Langson Museum’s newly merged collections, the exhibition also features contemporary works from the collection that further engage this history, demonstrating how early Hollywood’s constructions of place, labor, and representation continue to inform artistic practice today.

Curated by Alaina Claire Feldman, Chief Curator, and Christin Newell, Curatorial and Research Associate, with Amiri Bradford, curatorial student worker.

Featured artists:

Arthur Beaumont, Cindy Bernard, Edward Biberman, Matthew Booth, Carl Oscar Borg, Conrad Buff, Maynard Dixon, Oskar Fischinger, Robert Florey, George Gibson, Paul Grimm, Edith Head, Anna Althea Hills, Clark Hobart, George Hurrell, William Jekel, Ulysses Jenkins, Natalie Kalmus, Dong Kingman, Emil Kosa Jr., James Luna, Warren Newcombe, Charles Payzant, Granville Redmond, Arthur Grover Rider, Ed Ruscha, Sueo Serisawa, Clifford Silsby, Mungo Thomson, Slavko Vorkapich, Olaf Wieghorst