This picnic has some personal allusion. But what that is stumping me. Featured Image: William Kentridge. My Dear Friend (He That Fled His Fate). Screenprint (1994) See: entry for Kentridge’s Picnic Panic
Vettriano’s Elegy for the Dead Admiral is a beach picnic on the sand at the surf’s edge. A woman in red sits with her back to the viewer facing the sea. She is serenaded by two violinists and served by a waiter. The situation alludes to the death of the...
Austen knows how to ruin a picnic, as she does in Sense and Sensibility. Ang Lee and his screenwriter Emma Thompson get the disappointment right. But then invent an original picnic to make up for Austen’s to mitigate the Dashwood family’s letdown. Critics...
Wood ants ruin a picnic in Angels & Insects. It’s a comic episode adapted from A.S. Byatt’s novella, Morpho Eugenia, a novella about predatory deception among the English gentry. Taking advantage of Midsummer’s Day, the Alabaster family settles...
Harvest Celebration demonstrates a satirical view of Soviet rigidity and social realism and embraces sexuality and lascivious behavior for fun. The subject is a send-up of the farm collective as an agricultural paradise pictured in official Soviet art, such as Feodor...
Suggested contemporary picnic fare for jane Austen includes many dishes requiring extensive preparation. We know who does the eating, but who does the prepping and the cooking? Broccoli (served hot or cold) Salmagundi Oysters, Stewed and in Loaves A Pretty Dish of...
Inspired by Giovanni Bellini’s The Feast of the Gods, Lorenza De’ Medici created this menu forth Artist’s Table (1995). De Medici promises foods are full of the flavor of the Renaissance. But it’s difficult to imagine Bellini or his patrons...
Vertiel’s picnic is a lovers’ tryst in a finca above Marbella, a town on the Costa Brava. Robert Masters and Carmen Fernandez, a flamenco dancer, are having a farewell picnic because she is leaving for Madrid to dance with an important company. She packs a...
Ivory and Jhabvala imagine a “typical” gala Parisian garden party circa 1784. It was hosted by the Marquis de Lafayette for Thomas, then acting as American ambassador. Though de Lafayette was philosophically democratic, he was required to cultivate relationships with...
De’ Medici’s was spired by Giovanni Bellini’s The Feast of the Gods to create this menu, which she says is full of the flavor of the Renaissance: Tuna Mousse/Spuma di Tonno Wild Boar in Sweet and Sour Chocolate Sauce/Cinghiale in Dolceforte Glazed Baby Onion with...
