If, in recent years, the art world has turned its back both on the visible world and on the idea of artist as interpreter or visionary, there have always been independent spirits who have marched to their own drummers, ignoring the career paths laid out by art schools and art markets. The circuitous path that Berkeley painter Jean-Claude Langer took to becoming a fine artist—through architecture studies, advertising design, and digital visual effects—provided him a broad-based training in visual aesthetics.

His paintings, on examination, are continuations in certain respects of the San Francisco Bay Area Figuration of the 50s and 60s, and thus heirs to Baudelaire’s concept to remaking the world subjectively, with self and world reconciled and harmonized.

–DeWitt Cheng

DeWitt Cheng is a San Francisco Bay Area art critic who writes for Art Ltd., Artillery, Huffington Post, and other print and web publications.