Bissell’s 7 ½ Cents is a light-hearted comedy about a garment factory in a small town in Iowa. Junction City is a shock to Sid Sorokin, the new superintendent of the Sleep Tite Pajama Company, because he used to be Chicago. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, he...
Uglow’s Musicians (1953) is a neo-representation depiction of figures in a pastoral setting. It’s s a picnicky pastoral of men and women enjoying themselves in a pastoral setting. The central figure plays guitar while others sing and dance. There is no food or wine....
The horror of LeRoy’s The Bad Seed is serial killer Rhoda Penmark, a darling little girl with blond pigtails and blue eyes who murders a classmate at a school picnic because she covets his penmanship medal (pun intended). The picnic food is present but...
Rhoda Penmark is a successful serial killer whose career begins at a school picnic. She looks innocent, a darling little girl with blond pigtails and blue eyes. But Rhoda’s interior is ruthless and murderous. Wanting the penmanship medal for herself...
I know only this photograph by George Platt Lynes of Cecil Beaton’s set for Frederick Ashton’s ballet Picnic at Tintagel. Ashton’s story of the doomed love affair of Tristram and Isuelt begins circa 1916 and then devolves into the mythological time when Tristan falls...
Have a motorcar, have a picnic. Featured Image: Roger-Viollet Agency. Couple Seated before a 4CV. Camargue (France) ( 1954) (File 340.2); http://www.roger-viollet.fr/agence.aspx
Thomas’ life and marriage were tumultuous. So in November 1953, when Caitlin Thomas entered St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York looking for her husband, she expected a positive answer to her question, “Is the bloody man dead yet?” What she got was “Not yet,” for he was...
Autant-Lara’s Le Blé en herbe is good at separating the dual aspects of love in Colette’s novel about adolescents and friends for years and learning about love while vacationing in Normandy. There are two parts to the narrative. In the first part, teenagers Philippe...
Warhol’s Picnic is an early work that lacks the pizazz of the later Pop paintings of the late 1960s. Featured Image: Andy Warhol. Picnic (1955c.), watercolor, ink, gouache on paper.
Allen’s Rubbish Dump is the closest to a spiritual picnic I know of. Christ’s stunning appearance in a wasteland suggests life without beauty when industry pollutes the environment. It is unclear if the roiling clouds are suggesting an approaching...
