“In the Land of Sunshine: Imaging the California Coast Culture” provides a refreshing look at our state’s beach culture history. It portrays 840 miles of coastline, spanning the mid 1800s to the present, through the lens of 90 paintings, along with prints, magazines covers, posters and photographs. Renowned artists represented include Donna Schuster, Joseph Kleitsch, Alson Clark, Phil Dike, Rex Brandt, Rick Griffin and Roger Kuntz. Beyond the geography that serves as its subject, “In the Land of Sunshine" also provides an overview of the evolution of Southern California art, not to mention a look at how life styles and fashions have changed here.
The show greets us with the gorgeous “Golden Gate from Angel Island” (1884) by Raymond D. Yelland. This romantic vision of the San Francisco Bay, with water meeting golden sky, evokes the Hudson River School style of paining. Another early piece, “Mid-Winter, Coronado Beach” (c. 1907) by Louis Betts, is a thickly painted look at old-fashioned beach attire. Donna Schuster’s “On the Beach” (1917) is a classic portrait of a young woman blocking the sun from her face with a large parasol. Deeper into the exhibition, Phil Dike’s “Sunlit Afternoon (Corona del Mar)” (1940s) is a cubist-influenced overview of sailboats in Newport Bay. More abstract is Rex Brandt’s “Surfriders” (1959), a thickly painted group of figures placed against a yellow-orange sky. A counterpoint to these works is Dennis Hare’s “The Cove (Monterey)” (1982), a representative watercolor of bikini clad California girls and their boyfriends. It provides a look back to a time when FM radio still played surf music. There are many more visual delights in this show that eventually bring us up to the present. Bradford Salamon’s “Monday at the Crab Cooker” (2016), a portrait of the popular Balboa Island eatery, makes you want to hit the beach and enjoy the good life — once you complete your museum visit.
