When Dorothy opens the door in The Wizard of Oz, gone is the drab, everyday sepia of the familiar. The world is anew: vibrant green rolling hills, a dazzling yellow brick road, a brilliant blue sky enshrining Dorothy and her observers in the warm magic of technicolor. Though it wasn’t the first film to employ color, The Wizard of Oz cued audiences into something fantastic and mystical well outside the scope of spoken language. Like Dorothy, we could alter that state of reality into something beautiful. Like Dorothy, we might escape to somewhere more miraculous. With The Wizard of Oz—with technicolor itself—arrived the promise of a magic leap into the unknown. 

Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema, presented by The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures as a part of the sprawling PST ART initiative in Los Angeles (the third iteration of the Getty-powered uniting of LA art institutions, both public and private), explores the transformative power of color in cinema. Through the use of historical artifacts, art installations, and several digital tools, the exhibit examines the technical role color plays in the overall journey of film. 

The exhibition begins with the consideration of color as tension within the film medium—that pull between the technical and the theoretical. Assistant Curator Sophie Serrano explains that the exhibition foremost considered the experience of an audience. She shares, “Color, if it’s doing its job right, is invisible.” 

The exhibit builds on three key tenets: historical milemarkers in color technology, the use of color as a storytelling medium, and the future of color in cinema. Though the show is not designed to be followed in strict chronological order, it opens with silks from Serpentine Dance, the first film to be made vibrant via meticulous hand coloring, and it ends with Color Arcade, a digital assortment of modern neon color in montage form.

Costumery plays a significant role throughout the exhibition: Iconic pieces of costume design are on display such as Kim Novak’s striking green collared dress in Vertigo, or Jamie Foxx’s brilliant blue suit in Django Unchained. Serrano mentions that costumes are often the starting point for setting a film’s color palette. “The idea is to build the color off the actor,” she shares, “and then build the world surrounding them.” 

In using color to flesh out the world in which the story takes place, we are able to better understand the medium we are engaging with. Django Unchained is a fabulous example of this, as Serrano points out, after working on the exhibition with costume designer Sharen Davis. “If Django’s never been able to pick his own clothes and he’s given free rein to pick whatever he wants, what does he pick? He goes for bright blue. He wants everyone to see him. He’s this peacock.” 

The introduction of color in cinema heightened the importance of artistry in textile, design, and costume creation, paving a new avenue in cinema for women. Davis is one of these women, and she speaks on the requisite meticulousness and limitations imposed by types of color, and in her case, real film versus today’s more common digital uses. “There were so many limitations [back in the 1990s, when I started my career],” Davis reminisces. “Synthetic fabric was not recommended—color would wash away on film. White fabric and bright colors could be problematic, so it was best to overdye the clothing or fabric in a light grey/tan bath.” 

Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema investigates what it means to navigate the world that exists within the frameworks that color has given it, indulging in the glorious universes cracked open by technical innovations. Just as Dorothy could no longer return to Kansas without the dazzling memory of Oz, we leave the cinema fundamentally altered by the colors we’ve witnessed, eager to implement a taste of the fantastical into our own lives—the clothes we wear, the art we create, the emotions we feel. A beautiful reminder, perhaps, that color is not just seen, but also felt.