The arts have always thrived in California—at first in the Franciscan chapels with their religious paintings and church music, later in the art galleries, gas-lit theaters, and opera houses of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and today in seaside artists' colonies, regional theaters, numerous concert halls, and, not least, in the motion picture studios of Hollywood.
In the mid-19th century, many artists came from the East to paint western landscapes, and some stayed on in California. The San Francisco Institute of Arts was founded in 1874; the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery was established in Sacramento in 1884; and the Monterey-Carmel artists' colony sprang up in the early years of the 20th century. Other art colonies developed later in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Laguna Beach, San Diego, and La Jolla. Notable art museums and galleries include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (founded in 1910), Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens at San Marino (1919), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1921), Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena (1924), and San Diego Museum of Art (1925).
The theater arrived in California as early as 1846 in the form of stage shows at a Monterey amusement hall. The first theater building was opened in 1849 in Sacramento by the Eagle Theater Co. Driven out of Sacramento by floods, the company soon found refuge in San Francisco; by 1853, that city had seven theaters. During the late 19th century, many famous performers, including dancer Isadora Duncan and actress Maude Adams, began their stage careers in California. Today, California theater groups with national reputations include the American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and Old Globe Theater of San Diego.
The motion picture industry did not begin in Hollywood—the first commercial films were made in New York City and New Jersey in the 1890s—but within a few decades this Los Angeles suburb had become synonymous with the new art form. California became a haven for independent producers escaping an East Coast monopoly on patents related to filmmaking. (If patent infringements were discovered, the producer could avoid a lawsuit by crossing the border into Mexico.) In 1908, an independent producer, William Selig, completed in Los Angeles a film he had begun in Chicago, The Count of Monte Cristo, which is now recognized as the first commercial film produced in California. He and other moviemakers opened studios in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Glendale, and—finally—Hollywood, where the sunshine was abundant, land was cheap, and the workforce plentiful. These independent producers developed the full-length motion picture and the star system, utilizing the talents of popular actors like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin again and again. In 1915, D. W. Griffith produced the classic "silent" The Birth of a Nation, which was both a popular and an artistic success. Motion picture theaters sprang up all over the country, and an avalanche of motion pictures was produced in Hollywood by such increasingly powerful studios as Warner Brothers, Fox, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Hollywood became the motion picture capital of the world. By 1923, film production accounted for one-fifth of the state's annual manufacturing value; in 1930, the film industry was one of the 10 largest in the US.
Hollywood flourished by using the latest technical innovations and by adapting itself to the times. Sound motion pictures achieved a breakthrough in 1927 with The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson; color films appeared within a few years; and Walt Disney originated the feature-length animated cartoon with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Whereas most industries suffered drastically from the depression of the 1930s, Hollywood prospered by providing, for the most part, escapist entertainment on a lavish scale. The 1930s saw the baroque spectacles of Busby Berkeley, the inspired lunacy of the Marx Brothers, and the romantic historical drama Gone with the Wind (1939). During World War II, Hollywood offered its vast audience patriotic themes and pro-Allied propaganda.
In the postwar period, the motion picture industry fell on hard times because of competition from television, but it recovered fairly quickly by selling its old films to television and producing new ones specifically for home viewing. In the 1960s, Hollywood replaced New York City as the main center for the production of television programs. Fewer motion pictures were made, and those that were produced were longer and more expensive, including such top box-office attractions as The Sound of Music (1965), Star Wars (1977), E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), Independence Day (1996), Titanic (1997), Armageddon (1998), and The Matrix Reloaded (2003). No longer are stars held under exclusive contracts, and the power of the major studios has waned as the role of independent filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas has assumed increased importance.
Among the many composers who came to Hollywood to write film music were Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, George Antheil, Ferde Grofe, Erich Korngold, and John Williams; such musical luminaries as Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were longtime residents of the state. Symphonic music is well established. In addition to the renowned Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose permanent conductors have included Zubin Mehta and Carlo Maria Giulini, there are the San Francisco Symphony and other professional symphonic orchestras in Oakland and San Jose. Some 180 semiprofessional or amateur orchestras have been organized in other communities. Resident opera companies perform regularly in San Francisco and San Diego. Annual musical events include the Sacramento and Monterey jazz festivals and summer concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.
California has also played a major role in the evolution of popular music since the 1960s. The "surf sound" of the Beach Boys dominated California pop music in the mid-1960s. By 1967, the "acid rock" of bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane (later Jefferson Starship), and the Doors had started to gain national recognition—and that year the heralded "summer of love" in San Francisco attracted young people from throughout the country. It was at the Monterey International Pop Festival, also in 1967, that Jimi Hendrix began his rise to stardom. During the 1970s, California was strongly identified with a group of resident singer-songwriters, including Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, and Warren Zevon, who brought a new sophistication to rock lyrics. Los Angeles is a main center of the popular music industry, with numerous recording studios and branch offices of the leading record companies. Los Angeles-based Motown Industries, the largest black-owned company in the US, is a major force in popular music.
California has nurtured generations of writers, many of whom moved there from other states. In 1864, Mark Twain, a Missourian, came to California as a newspaperman. Four years later, New York–born Bret Harte published his earliest short stories, many set in mining camps, in San Francisco's Overland Monthly. The writer perhaps most strongly associated with California is Nobel Prize–winner John Steinbeck, a Salinas native. Hollywood's film industry has long been a magnet for writers, and San Francisco in the 1950s was the gathering place for a group, later known as the Beats (or "Beat Generation"), that included Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The City Lights Bookshop, owned by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was the site of readings by Beat poets during this period.
In 2003, the California Arts Council and other arts organizations received grants totaling $8,429,100 from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, California organizations received $6.89 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The California Arts Council also used state financial resources to promote arts organizations. The California Council for the Humanities has offices in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. California is also a member state of the regional Western States Arts Federation. A California law, effective 1 January 1977, is the first in the nation to provide living artists with royalties on the profitable resale of their work.