The setting for Gluck’s “Noon” is about lost innocence. It’s a picnic at which two youths engage in a sexual act without considering what happens next. The unanswered question it whether this is an act of lust or love. Noon is meant to suggest the symbolic time...
Talbott’s Apple Pie Picnic is a send-up of the cliché “As American as apple pie.” Talbott jams as many icons as he can on the picnic cloth. Marilyn Monroe is on her knees next to a picnic basket, a steaming apple pie, a copy of Jack Kerouac’s...
Linhare’s picnickers, always women, are always naked. I’m not sure about the bee on the picnic cloth. See Judith Linares. Picnic Rock (2007). Gouache
Sirbiladze’s Drug Picnic is unpicnicky. A nightmare. See Tamuna Sirbiladze. Drug Picnic (2008). Acrylic on canvas.
Charles Darwin’s struggle to complete and publish On the Origin of the Species (1859) is Amiel’s idea for a picnic. This picnic probably never happened, but Amiel thought it a pleasant way for Darwin to discuss his scientific observations. The jolly picnic...
The newlyweds, Carl, and Ellie Fredricksen, dream of their future at a picnic. Walking out into the countryside, Karl and Ellie spread a picnic on the grass. Then, looking at the sky, they dream of a family. Alas, their romantic dreams of visiting Paradise Falls are...
Bright Star (2009), Jane Campion’s version of John Keats and Fanny Brawne’s love affair, invents two romantic courtship picnic scenes. These moments are poignant because we know the romance will end in heartbreak. The first is a picnic at which they kiss....
As sappy romantic novels go, David Nicholls’ One Day (2009) is about a one-night sexual encounter that becomes a life-long romantic heartache. Dexter and Emma’s picnic on Arthur’s Seat is never revealed, but we do know what each brings in their...
“Killing time” is Atkinson’s euphemism for a picnic. When Tracy Waterhouse, a retired sixty-five-year-old police detective, inexplicably abducts Courtney, a child of five, she is unsure about entertaining her. In near desperation, she suggests,...
Kosashvili’s picnic is comic and glum, as Chekhov intended. While other picnickers enjoy the view, Laevski, the protagonist, says, “To be in continual ecstasy over nature shows a poverty of imagination.” Laevski is a man who cannot enjoy himself,...
