The yellow basket and the yellow summer hat in They Arrived in Pittsburgh suggest that there will be a picnic. The grimy factory stacks spewing smoke suggest otherwise. The basket and hat symbolize the hope that in Pittsburgh (or any other industrial city), the...
On a fantastic day in 1941, Wolcott photographed picnickers on the Sarasota beach. She was working for the Farm Services Administration, documenting contemporary American life. Among her subjects was picnicking, which she found in serval guises on the beach and...
Succumbing to ethnic paranoia and anger, the United States Congress authorized President Franklin Roosevelt to intern Japanese Americans whether they were U.S. citizens or not. The law was signed in February. In May 1942, Lee documented some of the...
Momentary serenity and happiness are upended in Welty’s “Asphodel,” a humorous picnic story in which three old maids are frightened by the appearance of a naked man. Cora, Irene, and Phoebe plan a picnic at Asphodel, the former home of their recently...
With the Nazi army retreating, Churchill picnicked in Holland on the west bank of the Rhine River with Gen. Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshall Alan Brooke in February 1945. Allied armies had already crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany, and though the area was...
Moravia’s story’s “Back to the Sea” [Ritorno al mare] is about a picnic is without a shred of joy. It’s partly about gender relations and a metaphor for post-war Italy in the guise of a nightmare merénda, In the summer of 1945, Lorenzo,...
Astrid Lindgren’s zany picnic is a gastronomical feast. The chief picnicker is Pippi Longstocking, a brash, energetic, good-natured Swedish girl of nine who lives independently packs her own picnic. After zipping through some household chores, Pippi takes her...
Bradbury’s “The Million Year Picnic” is a sad metaphor about what a picnic is not—a family’s escape from Earth to build a new Eden on Mars. We don’t know how it ends because this is the final story in the collection of The Martian...
Albert’s Le repos des chasseurs, aka Hunters’ Rest is a scaled down version of the Halt on the Hunt. The simple menu is bread ,fruit, and wine.
Cadmus’s What I Believe (1947-1948) is a beach picnic without food, inspired by E.M. Forester’s essay of the same-named. Forster is the dark man reading a book with the red cover in the lower left foreground. The figures are based on some of Cadmus’ friends and former...
