At first glance, it’s a group posing for a photograph, but scrutiny reveals a group of vampires actively pursuing what they do best. Then you realize that Jeff Wall’s photograph Vampires’ Picnic (1991) is political satire, an allusion to Karl...
Animal Dreams describes a celebration of All Souls’ Day in Grace, Arizona. The cemetery is on a hill above the town. Once there, the graves are cleaned and decorated, after which the family enjoys a picnic. The protagonist Codi says, “We were a harvester-ant clan...
Morse’s Picnic on the Moon is a young people’s book with a serious message for world peace. It’s Morse’s notion that while Earthlings picnic on the Moon, they overlook its hidden inhabitants who live in peace surrounded by lunar tranquility....
Isla Sorna is a dangerous place to picnic. Traveling by Range Rover over Costa Rica’s bumpy roads to a deserted beach, the Bowman family for adventure and picnicking on the beach. When they get there, they are alone. Ellen Bowman is afraid of snakes. Young Cathy...
Lucy Rawlinson, the granddaughter of Gwen Raverat, paints under the name Lucy Raverat. A series of three picnic-themed picnic paintings is a metaphor for the state of her mind, evolving from troubled and uncertain o hopeful. In 1986, The Picnic suggest trouble...
“Passing 50 Without Breaking the Speed Limit” is Peter Mayle’s paean to picnics. It’s a pun on the celebration of his fiftieth birthday pique-nique and not the speed limit on the twisty roads of Province in restored 19th-century caléches. Mayle...
Mann’s photograph Picnic on the Grass is a portrait of her daughter at a picnic sitting in the same pose as Victorine Meurent, the model for the nude in Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass. Jessie at 7 shows her daughter Jesse sitting on the Grass with a plate of food: a...
Ringgold’s tapestry Tar Beach (1988) and her children’s story Tar Beach (1991) portray a classic urban rooftop picnic. When Cassie Lightfoot flies over the rooftops of Harlem, the lights of the George Washington Bridge glow against the black sky like...
Brassaï’s Picnic on the Edge of the Marne is a snapshot of a group at leisure. It’s a typical picnic with mounds of food and six bottles of wine for five adults. Compare Brassaï with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Sunday on the Banks of the Marne [Dimanche sur les bords de...
Benton’s screenplay by Tom Stoppard angered E.L. Doctorow because they made too many revisions to his novel Billy Bathgate. They did, however, get Billy Bathgate’s picnic right. The picnic is a pivotal moment in Billy’s romantic education. It takes...
Despite the many jokes, it’s seldom the case, but many presume ants interrupt picnics. Deborah Gordon offers that ants rarely disrupt picnics; John O’Brien suggests maybe they do. In Ants at Work, Gordon plays down the picnic: “Indeed the observation that where there...
The Midsummer’s Day picnic is ruined when flying ants fall into the strawberries, cucumber sandwiches, and silver cream jugs. Everyone runs for cover. Belying the humor, the dying ants in e cream jugs and teacups, is Byatt’s metaphor contrasting the...
Graham’s “Picnic” is a young girl’s bitter remonstrance of a mother betrayed by a father who is a serial adulterer. The poem’s narrator, about twelve years old, has a compulsive need to retell this story of a picnic, her father’s...
Waller’s sudsy Bridges of Madison County does not include a picnic. But Clint Eastwood’s film does. Francesca (Meryl Streep) and Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) enjoy a romantic picnic by Roseman Bridge. Featured Image: The bridge is in the background. Clint Eastwood. See...
Oates’s Black Water tracks a Fourth of July picnic as it leads to the seduction of Elizabeth Anne Kelleher, a woman half age, by an unnamed Senator. “A photograph of the Senator and Kelly presents a formally posed group, but what cannot be seen is The Senator’s...
Foster’s Howards End, Ivory’s picnic reveals Edwardian hypocrisy, the inferior status of women, predatory sexuality, and the illusion of male superiority. This pivotal episode occurs when Henry Wilcox is undone by his former mistress, Jacky Bast, at a...
Martin’s picnic in Birdsong is situated in a forest clearing on the shore of a tranquil river. The group stops to picnic, ignoring the sign prohibiting boating and fishing that the picnickers have blithely ignored. Unless you miss its significance, the sign...
What’s to be done after a long night of love-making? Go on a picnic, of course. Eastwood’s picnic setup in Bridges of Madison County is stagy: a cloth on the grass, a cooler, oranges (never peeled), and apples (never eaten). Coca-Cola (never opened)....
Hercules Protecting the Balance Between Pleasure and Virtue is Ligare’s allusion to Dürer’s Hercules at the Crossroads (1498c.). What Dürer implies, Ligare makes emphatic. His essential change is the picnic. He shows no food; instead, Ligare places Pleasure on a blue...
Piedmont, West Virginia, where Gates spent his youth, was a segregated town where most of the inhabitants worked at a Westvaco paper mill. Though Gates looks fondly at the company picnic scheduled to close in 1969 or 1970, the event is bittersweet. It’s...
