George Segal’s The Asian Picnic (1996)

George Segal’s The Asian Picnic (1996)

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...
Barbara Banks’s’ “A Tibetan Picnic” (1996)

Barbara Banks’s’ “A Tibetan Picnic” (1996)

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...

Fred Cress’ An Outing (1996)

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)
Billy Collins’s “Picnic Lightning” (1997)

Billy Collins’s “Picnic Lightning” (1997)

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...
P.D. James’s A Certain Justice (1997)

P.D. James’s A Certain Justice (1997)

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....
Jacqueline Woodson’s We Had a Picnic Sunday Past (1997)

Jacqueline Woodson’s We Had a Picnic Sunday Past (1997)

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...
Clint Eastwood’sMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

Clint Eastwood’sMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

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...
John Madden’s Mrs. Brown (1997)

John Madden’s Mrs. Brown (1997)

Madden’s picnic in a glen is a short episode designed to show how Queen Victoria’s dependence on her gillie John Brown’s guardianship.  *He ensures the Queen’s privacy by chasing snooping journalists. After Albert’s death,...
Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)

Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)

Spielberg’s Jaws begins with an evening beach party on the beach. The suspense is thrilling, and the result for Chrissie is tragic: eaten by a great white shark! A picnic party on the beach also begins Jurassic Park: The Lost World, but this time, it’s suspenseful but...