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...
George Segal’s The Asian Picnic (1996) is a group of picnickers on the grass or a beach. Segal’s métier is to make plaster casts of life-size human figures and then assemble them in various settings. The Asian Picnic has three picnickers who have spread a picnic cloth...
In a pasture at 16,000 feet high, surrounded by the Himalayan peaks, Bank’s stopped for a picnic on the road to Lhasa. The campsite is chosen not by hunger but by availability. It was level enough for a camp. Their motorcar is unpacked, a fire lighted, and tea...
Cress’ An Outing defies expectation. No one that I know has managed to project such a cantankerous couple on the grass. Cress is surely squinting at Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Maybe? Not happy! See Fred Cress. An Outing (1996)
Aware that the phrase “picnic lightning” is from Nabokov’s Lolita, Collins emphasizes happenstance and stresses the notion that life is a pattern of growth and decay and growth. Humbert’s ‘picnic lightning” is associated with his...
Adam Dalgliesh takes a break during the murder investigation for a picnic. He needs the time to think, and so he picnics. Dalgliesh is utterly content, a moment of unusual peace in an otherwise hectic life. An hour south of Salisbury near Lulworth Cove, he stops....
Woodson’s We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past (1997) is a joyous family gathering with mounds to eat. It’s a story about an African American family reunion picnic in an urban park. The narrator, a young girl, comes with her Grandma, who has worked frying...
The authoritative recommendation of Minerva, the Voodoo spiritualist in Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil says that when planning a picnic for witches, you must feed them pork because “witches loves pork meat.” When Minerva is performing spells on...
