RaveSpectrum CultureFor all of its odd fads and weird crazes, its eccentric characters boldly making completely audacious claims with their full chests, Baron’s The Martians doesn’t feel as remote as you might expect. Privileged white men are still dreaming of Mars as the next frontier to conquer. An overwhelmed, exhausted populace still seeks sensationalist headlines in bold 32-point font instead of boring news that delivers hard truths. People are still seeking to fill the God-shaped hole of Nietzsche’s obituary for the deity with pretty much anything they can get their hands on. These aspects make it the perfect time to read Baron’s meticulously researched chronicle of a time of unbridled optimism and relentless disorientation — no matter how different the world might look.
Laura Cumming
PositiveSpectrum Culture\"Cumming delivers a keen-eyed defense of Dutch painting, as a whole, which some art historians have written off as \'just transcriptions of nature,\' at best, or \'just depictions of trivial stuff,\' when they’re feeling spiteful. Finally, Thunderclap is a memoir, a loving and moving recounting of Cumming’s own love affair with Dutch painting and the importance it’s played in her life, most notably as a connection to her father, the Scottish painter James Cumming ... This fluctuation between history, memoir and philosophical reverie continues throughout Thunderclap, impossible to unravel. Once Cumming establishes her affection for Fabritius and the importance his paintings have played in her life, her biography of the painter begins in earnest. She applies her powerful skills as a biographer to reassemble the scant details of Fabritius’ life into a serviceable history of the painter’s tragically short life. Even more importantly, she uses them to paint a detailed portrait of Delft in the 17th-Century, a Golden Age of art and artists ... The back-and-forth between history, biography and memoir is not without its shortcomings, though. Some of Cumming’s asides can feel slightly random, adding little to the otherwise driving narrative...These random asides can sometimes feel like losing the plot. More so, they feel like the musings of someone who’s made art their life to the point it’s impossible to extricate the two. The beauty of Thunderclap‘s layered narrative is that even if one aspect isn’t your absolute favorite, you won’t have to wait long to yet again strike gold.\
