California’s coast and the Los Angeles River flow in art on display at Hilbert Museum

One of California’s most precious resources flows through two new exhibitions at the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University. Water is captured in “California’s Golden Coast: Selections from The Hilbert Collection” and “The Los Angeles River: An Unexpected Beauty,” both now on view in Orange, through Aug. 9.

“We have so many paintings, drawings and prints that have to do with the coast,” said Mary Platt, director of the Hilbert Museum. “Whether it is people having fun on the beach, little villages and towns and cities on the waterfront or people sailing on the water.”

Platt worked closely with museum founder Mark Hilbert to curate “California’s Golden Coast” and the result is more than 40 pieces in both watercolors and oils, painted from the 1930s to today that reflect life and leisure on the coast and the way it has changed over the years.

The show opens with a piece from Danny Galieote that’s titled “The Big Gang.”

“Danny Galieote was a Disney artist, he worked during the ‘Tarzan,’ ‘Treasure Planet,’ ‘Princess and the Frog’ era as a character animator,” said Platt. “Now he does these 1940s-inflected paintings.”

Girls in bikinis with vaguely retro hairstyles sit on beach towels facing the water and each other, away from the viewer. In the background, waves curl up to the shore and pillowy clouds fill the sky. The busy frame is similar to Galieote’s “Beach Bevy,” another seaside scene that is part of the Hilbert’s permanent collection with a composition inspired by Michelangelo’s “Battle of Cascina.”

Lively beach scenes and picturesque coastlines are on view in the South Galleries at the Hilbert Museum.

(Courtesy of the Hilbert Museum)

Equally lively is a piece by Katie Crown depicting a crowded beach. It’s interpreted quite differently from Galieote’s work, with sharp angles and more abstract figures.

Some works imagine a more lonely coastline, with a single early morning surfer or local landmarks such as Ruby’s on the pier.

“This exhibition just captures all the phases of the coastline, from their most crowded to the least crowded,” Platt said.

Platt also co-curated “The Los Angeles River” with John Kosta, where the California artist captures the exquisite beauty to be found within the concrete landscape of the L.A. River.

“Most Angelenos have seen their river hundreds of times, often in short glimpses as passed over on highways or trains. This is a river submerged in the public’s consciousness, always present and yet often invisible,” a statement from Kosta reads.

His “Los Angeles River Series,” completed over several years, explores the urban atmosphere that has grown around and in some ways, restrained the river.

“He has spent the last 15 years depicting all the various aspects of the L.A. River, which is now of course channelized into this concrete river course,” said Platt.

Kosta has made an effort to capture the river at different ebbs and flows, with special attention paid to the monumental architecture. There are examples of how humans and animals interact with the river, with perhaps the best juxtaposition of such a relationship present in “Los Angeles River Painting #83-Alterado.” Rain runoff creates puddles in which an egret hunts for frogs, a stark white flash against dark, stagnate water that’s edged with algae.

“The Los Angeles River: An Unexpected Beauty” at the Hilbert Museum features paintings by John Kosta.

(Courtesy of the Hilbert Museum)

A mini-exhibition, also curated by Platt, continues the theme of water in the Sodaro South Building. “Surfin’ Cinema: Surf Movie Posters from The Hilbert Collection” captures the surf lifestyle depicted in surf movies of the 1960s and ’70s, a time when movie posters were illustrated works of art.

“These are all original movie posters,” Platt said. “It is a little show, but I like to use all the wall space we can.”

A fourth exhibit opened this week at the Hilbert Museum, “Sunlight and Shadows: Emil Kosa Jr. Art from The Hilbert Collection.” Curated by Gordon McClelland, the show highlights works the Hollywood film industry veteran painted when he wasn’t on set at 20th Century Fox studios from the 1940s through the ’60s. While his name might not sound familiar, he is responsible for some of the industry’s most iconic special effects paintings.

“A lot of people might they think they don’t know the work of Kosa,” said Platt. “But if you have seen the 20th Century Fox searchlight logo, he designed that.”

Kosa earned an Oscar for his work on the 1963 film “Cleopatra” and was responsible for the matte painting of the Statue of Liberty coming out of the sand used during the shocking finale of 1968’s “Planet of the Apes.”

Kosa’s cinematic eye is evident in works that cleverly use light to strategically illuminate the focus of a painting. A watercolor titled “On the Fringe” is a view of Los Angeles from Bunker Hill, painted during the redevelopment years when old Victorian homes and some sections of Chinatown faced demolition. Fingers of light through dark clouds create a feeling gloom over all that is being lost to change.

All of the pieces in “Sunlight and Shadows” come from the Hilbert Collection, a testimony, Platt said, to its expansiveness and the variety of exhibitions the museum is able to pull for the continually changing South galleries.

“This gives you an example of how deep and broad the Hilbert Collection of California art is,” Platt said.

The Hilbert Museum at Chapman University is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s closed Sunday and Monday. Admission is free, but advance reservations are recommended and can be made at hilbertmuseum.org.