Drunk Girls Do Renaissance Paintings in Bathrooms

Cait and Kate attempt to recreate Renaissance paintings at varying levels of drunk and with very little effort. Read our rules here.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Hendrik Danckerts, Charles II Presented with a Pineapple (circa 1677)

Date: November 9, 2016

Location: 11th floor women’s bathroom, Heller Hall, University of Minnesota

Drunkenness: 1/20

Level of Difficulty: 4/10 - I know we don’t do these DGDRPiB entries real often anymore (we’re busy ladies!) but we wanted to do yet another super special one, this time in honor of the dissertation defense of yours truly. I’ve joined my other half Cait and become a doctor myself, and darnit I feel pretty good about it. We wanted to do another painting whose theme closely matches our PhD work, and Danckert’s painting of Charles II being presented with the first pineapple cultivated in England seemed just a little too perfect. Mostly because it necessitated Caitlin bringing a pineapple to my defense. Which she did, most willingly. She also snuck some booze in her bag so we could take the picture right after my defense but not break one of our cardinal blog rules (must have consumed alcohol). Hence the low drunkenness level. So we down a shot of whiskey each and prayed nobody opened the bathroom door while she was kneeling majestically at my feet, hoisting a pineapple aloft. We made do with a teensy skinny little mirror because we’re totally willing to face all of life’s challenges, whether they be grad school or less-than-ideal mirror situations. Hopefully there will be more time for more DGDRPiB adventures now that we’re both real life actual doctors. Hopefully. Anyway, here’s our goof.

xoxo, Drs. Cait and Kate, PhD.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Anthony Van Dyck, Charles in Three Positions (1635)

Date: April 22, 2016

Location: Republic, Seven Corners, Minneapolis, MN Drunkenness: 5/20

Level of Difficulty: 4/10 -- Today’s is a very special DGDRPiB, friends. For today my illustrious other half, the Hermia to my Helena, successfully defended her dissertation and is now the proud owner of the title “Doctor.” Cait, PhD. Naturally, we had to get drinks and find a bathroom mirror ASAP.

In terms of timeline, Cait’s dissertation and my dissertation and Van Dyck’s Ghosts of Charleses Past fall at roughly the same time. Which is why, when our featured third honorary Drunk Girl (Pat, the brilliant woman to whom we owe the very concept of our blog) suggested it, we practically passed out for gasping at how perfect it was.

Yes, obviously Cait and I must portray Charles I in painting. Naturally. Indubitably. Without question. It is, after all, the day of her defense. Charles, who got his head lopped off. Charles, whose son would be restored to the English throne eleven years later after England’s only (and brief) foray into sanctioned Republicanism. Charles, without whom Cait and I wouldn’t really have dissertations at all. Uh huh, yeah, we got this. Please offer my best friend a hearty congratulations at having earned her PhD. Because I’m going to ask you to do the same thing for me in about six months’ time.

I mean hell, I even made pins.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Andrea Mantegna, Madonna and Child (circa 1480)

Date: November 18, 2015

Location: Erte, Northeast Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 5/20

Level of Difficulty: 8/10

-- It’s getting hard to find Renaissance-era paintings featuring two people that aren’t baby Jesus and his mom.  So we decided to switch it up this time and have me be the wee baby savior, and we soon remembered why Cait always plays the smaller human: because she’s literally the smaller human.

After we enjoyed a couple of cocktails each and I snarfed down a big ol’ steak and stole more than my fair share of french fries off Cait’s plate, we cased the bathroom. Cait dragged a chair from the hallway into the bathroom so she’d have something higher to perch on, but it didn’t help much, and I ended up having to really scooch my booty forward on the sink and lean into her body to make my my apparently grotesque giantness as small as possible. It sort of felt like an exercise in the horrors of the human form.

But mad props to Erte’s giant, well-lit bathroom mirror (the Mecca of Mirrors, as we have dubbed it). We only had to apologize to two women for crawling on the bathroom sink while they were trying to wash their hands.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Lucas Cranach, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1531

Date: September 16, 2015

Location: 331 Club, Northeast Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 4/20

 Level of Difficulty: 7/10

-- This one isn’t so much good because of it’s final product (which is, admittedly, sub par), but rather because of the lengths to which we had to go in order to create it. Cait and I pregamed at 331 prior to Transmission (shocking, I know) and decided it was high time we tackled an Adam and Eve painting. I left Cait at the bar to pick from between the two lime chunks in her drink in order to determine which would represent the forbidden fruit best. In the meantime, I ran outside to the parking lot, found a nearby tree, and snapped a branch off. I hid it in the radiator grate near the bathrooms until we were ready to take the picture. Cait giggled and clapped excitedly when I produced it as if straight out of the wall like some shitty magic trick.

Obviously we had mirror problems, but what we like about this one is it was sort of impossible for me to crop out the bathroom sink, so you can see Cait’s phone behind the faucet. Heh.  (Side note: apologies to Cait for failing to post this one for like two whole weeks.)

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Leonardo da Vinci, Le proporzioni del corpo umano secondo Vitruvio (1490)

Date: June 26, 2015

Location: REV Ultra Lounge, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 14/20 Level of Difficulty: 4/10

-- “UM THE VITRUVIAN MAN IS A SKETCH, NOT A PAINTING, KATE AND CAIT.”  Wow, spare us your pedantry. We dgaf for two reasons. 1) Our blog, our rules. 2) It was pride weekend and everybody was in a fricking good mood and it was a dark bathroom so the contours just worked, ok? Cait and I hit up a Robyn vs. Taylor Swift dance party in the basement of some swank restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. I forget which one. Whatever. Our plan was to drink drinks and dance our little booties off, both of which we managed with both grace and aplomb or at least a lot of aplomb. REV has a fricking ridiculous bathroom, fully stocked with more bathroom items than you might reasonably need in a night (or exactly as many bathroom items as you might need), and a friendly attendant who handed me paper towels as soon as I got done washing my hands. Also, mints and lollipops. I mean, like, I got LEGIT excited:

If the lighting had been any better near the giant ass mirror, I would have given this a lower difficulty. And also the obvious fact that I had to hold my phone with my boobs. But at least it meant I managed to get a fucking sweet blooper in which I accidentally used my flash, thus making it appear as though I’m an eight-limbed Ironman.

HAPPY PRIDE WEEKEND, LOVERS! XOXO!

-Kate and Cait

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Annibale Carracci, Man with a Monkey (1590-91)

Date: June 13, 2015

Location: Brit’s Pub, downtown Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 3/20

Level of Difficulty: 4/10 -- Cait and I found ourselves at Brit’s Pub on Saturday night, killing time prior to Write Fight III, a bracket-style elimination writing competition that I was competing in, put on by the amazing local literary geniuses at Revolver. Cait and my cousin/roommate (”cuzhabitant”) Michaela were my first and second mates respectively. We had team jean jacket vests made and everything!

Cait was already a couple of drinks ahead of me (I didn’t want to drink prior to having to compete), but when she excitedly reminded me that Brit’s had a super large and well-lit mirror, I fished my whiskey flask out of my backpack and took a few pulls before heading into the bathroom to produce the delightful masterpiece above. “Who’s going to be the monkey?” Cait’s husband asked us. We just looked at him incredulously like uh, who the hell do you think is going to be the monkey, dummy? Cait kept yelling “IT’S FOR ART!” at confused patrons who came into the bathroom, and I held on to her as hard as I could because she was crouching on a slippery bathroom counter. All in all this one wasn’t particularly difficult, aided in part by the fact that I wasn’t even remotely drunk (but I did drink, so we didn’t break any rules, you pedantic sticklers). Write Fight III ended up being a balls-out AMAZING event. Eight writers pitted against each other under increasingly distracting/difficult situations, given ten minutes to write a story based on a one-line prompt. And guess what guys...

I WON THE WHOLE THING. CHECK OUT MY CHAMPION’S BELT, Y’ALL. I’ll be back next year to defend my title!

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Unknown Artist, Fontainebleau School, Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses sœurs (1594)

Date: May 19, 2015

Location: Palmer’s Bar, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 5/20

Level of Difficulty: 3/10 --Prior to Cait and I becoming best friends with the bartender at Palmer’s, we treated ourselves to one of the more convenient DGDRPiBs we’ve done. We downed a quick whiskey ginger each and took our sweet sweet time in the bathroom, because we were the only women in the bar for the entire hour we were there.

We eventually split up and spent our nights separately: Cait proceeded to get far drunker (if her morning “ouch everything hurts” text was any indication) and I proceeded to get softly rejected by a male human. It was a perfectly typical night, is what I’m saying.  I took a moment to gingerly position Cait’s thumb and forefinger approximately atop my general nipple area. “Did you find it?” she asked. “Yup, I think so.”  “I love you,” she said. “I love you too,” I replied.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Giuditta e Oloferne (1599)

Date: May 15, 2015

Location: Dangerous Man Brewing Company, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 7/20

Level of Difficulty: 2/10

-- First of all, we decided to double our drunkenness scale. Not because we get THAT drunk THAT often, but because we felt like it was easier to represent the nuances of drunkenness on a 20 point scale. 7 out of 20 tells you more, I think, than 3 or 4 out of 10. Anywho, business aside, this one was a cake walk. Dangerous Man Brewing Company in Northeast MPLS has the world’s best selfie bathroom, because it’s single stall, well lit, and has an enormous mirror. Cait had been there for a couple of hours before me, happily drinking beers and scoping the joint. I arrived around 6:30, grumpily downed a peanut butter beer (I don’t like beer, but rules is rules), and we had this one done in no time. Apologies, conservationists, for wasting some paper towels on my head. The below blooper is evidence that, as per usual, Cait could only handle so much of my face before she broke into giggles. Good thing I’m used to people responding to my face like that.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Jacopo di Cione, Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels (1340-1400)

Date: April 29, 2015

Location: The Library Bar, Dinkytown, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 6/10

Level of Difficulty: 9/10 -- The level of difficulty here is entirely dictated by how long it took us to find the information for the original image, which is an Italian altarpiece. I ended up having to post a thread on reddit.com/r/art begging for it. Lesson learned: don’t do a DGDRPiB without already knowing what the hell it is we’re recreating. Cait and I were just about to head over to The Varsity for an 80s soundtrack-themed Transmission, and honest to goodness only pregamed The Library (”The Library! Where the drinks are cheap and probably not drugged!”) in order to get a quick DGDRPiB in. My cousin dutifully watched our beverages at the bar while I hoisted myself onto the bathroom counter (”I’ve got your vagina pretty well covered,” Cait assured me) and Cait latched herself onto my right boob for about five minutes. “I don’t care! I don’t judge!” one girl hollered at us as she walked in the bathroom and entered the nearest stall. We hadn’t even said anything; she just offered that up. I’m beginning to think Cait is deliberately choosing the Renaissance art wherein she would have to be touching my boob. Wait, no, actually that’s DEFINITELY what’s happening.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation (1489)

Date: April 10, 2015

Location: First Avenue, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 7/10

Level of Difficulty: 4/10

-- It was Forever Young prom night, so Cait and I robbed some poor seventeen year olds of the prom dresses of their dreams by buying these beauties out from under them at the thrift store. And it’s a good thing Caitlin hadn’t actually descended from the heavens to announce my pregnancy to me, because we did plenty of drinking and dancing and ugh babies just RUIN prom. It was a packed bathroom (Except, for some reason, at the very moment we got this particular shot) because it was a packed First Avenue; Forever Young’s annual grown up prom is one of my favorite nights of the year. I only lost Cait twice, no drinks got spilled on me, and I didn’t wake up until 1:30 this afternoon! High five Prom 2015!

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Unequal Couple (Old Man in Love) (1537)

Date: March 27, 2015

Location: Moose on Monroe, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 8.5/10

Level of Difficulty: 5/10 -- Cait and I felt a sudden desire to have cheap rail drinks and karaoke “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” but we didn’t want to walk the extra block all the way to the Vegas Lounge. So, Moose it was! As soon as we walked in the door an extremely drunk woman with breath like a decomposing rodent swept both of us into a dance.

We were once again pleasantly surprised by how little the women in the bathroom with us seemed to care about what we were doing. “Sorry! We’ll be done in a second! Don’t mind us!” “It’s cool, you guys just keep doing your thing.” We even made a friend!

I’m calling this one a medium difficulty because there were a lot of women coming and going from the bathroom (dive bar in Nordeast on a Friday night, obvs) but pretty easy because we were drunk enough not to care. Later that night Cait and I were the subject of an attempted wooing by a man who bought us a single rose and a single shot of Patrón. To share. Then I explained to a total stranger at our table that I don’t believe in God because I get my morality from Batman, I dunno, I sorta started to lose track of the night.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Sandro Botticelli, Pallas and the Centaur (1482)

Date: The Ides of March, 2015

Location: Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lounge, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 6/10

Level of Difficulty: 4/10

-- Cait texted me this morning looking for a brunch partner.

Having firmly established that we both looked like greasy gross unshowered crap, I picked her up to head to Psycho Suzi’s. It was only upon arrival that Cait and I realized that this week also marks our 5 year friendiversary (we met when I came to Minneapolis for my campus visit before starting my PhD, and she was already a first year), which we celebrated by having two bloodies instead of just one (which means 46 cheese cubes instead of 23, 30 meat stick chunks instead of 15, four handfuls of blue cheese stuffed olives instead of two). Cait hid a knife in her boot so we could recreate this Botticelli as accurately as possible. And naturally it was determined that I should serve as the centaur since I’m the one who, when running/walking/existing, looks the most horse-like. 

As it turns out, though, day drinking makes us sleepy. We eventually went back to my house, took our pants off, crawled in bed, turned on Friends, and promptly fell asleep.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Madonna Litta, Leonardo da Vinci (1490-91)

Date: March 4, 2015

Location: Club Jäger, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 6/10

Level of Difficulty: 8/10 --Time was of the essence on this, our second time doing one of these at Jäger. I joined Cait at Transmission far later than I should have even been conscious, because I'm an enormous pushover and I love her too much to leave her all alone with a bunch of sweaty strangers. Every single time I say I probably won't go. And every single time I end up going. *sigh*

We decided a DGDRPiB was in order, and I quickly downed a vodka cranberry so we wouldn't be breaking one of our cardinal rules. And I say time was of the essence because there was a steady stream of ladies trying to use the bathroom.

"What are you guys doing?"

"Recreating this photo."

"Why?"

"We have a blog."

"Ohh....."

I even captured the moment when one gal handed me her phone so I could follow us for her on her Tumblr app! FANS!

And of course, as usual, we had to battle the ever present Cait Giggles as she gingerly pressed her mouth against my boob.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Section of Juno and Argus, Peter Paul Rubens (1610)

Date: February 20, 2015

Location: Kate's house

Drunkenness: 9/10 Level of Difficulty: 9/10 -- OK, full disclosure, once Cait and I decided we were going to have a small get-together at my house on Friday, we more or less set out to make it our drunkest DGDRPiB to date. Cait was already three drinks ahead of me by the time she came over, but I had taken twice as many Fireball shots as her by the time we took the photos. So although Cait insisted she was "ALREADY AT A TEN! KATIE! I'M ALREADY AT A TEN LET'S DO IT RIGHT NOW LET'S DO IIIIIIIT!!" I invariably brought the average down a bit by being able to drink as much as a small horse. I didn't even factor in poor Shana's drunk level, as she was Max's sober driver and yet for some unfathomable reason offered to play the nose picking cherub in what ended up being a totally asinine endeavor. Problem #1: Cait's a Shorty McShortShort. Her butt just didn't reach high enough. Problem #2: The logistics were such that we spent the majority of the time just trying to work out the geometry of the image, and giggling, and trying not to fall off the toilet, and Kate threatening to push Cait off the toilet, and Shana undoubtedly just sighing and shaking her head because did I mention we only met her that night? Yeah.

I insisted we try it with me as the butt, what with me having a solid six inches on Cait. It worked...ish. But of course we more and stupider bloopers than usual.

P.S. Shana has a super cute Instagram. You should check it out.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

The Metamorphosis of Hermaphrodite and Salmacis, Jan Gossaert (circa 1517)

Date: February 19, 2015

Location: Bar La Grassa, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 6/10 Difficulty: 8/10

-- Cait and I met up at Bar La Grassa to pregame before our weekly pilgrimage to Club Jäger for Transmission. I was wearing a dress because I was at the Guthrie just prior to review A Midsummer Night's Dream for The Tangential. Cait was wearing a dress because she's Cait. I scored this an eight difficulty based solely on energy expended by my thighs. Turns out, trying to interlock your legs behind someone else's legs isn't the world's most natural pose, and I kept having to take breaks because my thigh muscles were burning. This was aided exactly zero by Cait's giggle fits (which I now realize we just need to work around). "You cannot giggle through this one," I pleaded. "I just do not have the stamina for that." To which she, of course, giggled. One unintended consequence of all this is that now, when we go into literally any bathroom, our first instinct is to size up the quality of its mirrors.

I insisted upon a posed "blooper" picture to illustrate how gargantuan I am next to Caitlin when I'm wearing heels (well, always, but especially in heels). The fact that she compares me to A Midsummer Night's Dream's Helena would be thoroughly offensive if not for the fact that she's spot on about the tall and awkward. Cait's the acorn to my maypole.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Virgin and Child, Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece (1510s)

Date: February 8, 2015

Location: Ngon Vietnamese Bistro, St. Paul

Drunkenness: 4/10

Level of Difficulty: 5/10

-- Cait and I wanted a boozy lunch, so we headed to Frogtown for fancy drinks and fancy mussels and fancy sausage and fancy raviolis and stuff. The bathroom was a one stall/locked door situation, which we're really learning to appreciate. But the mirror situation left something to be desired, and it turns out that something was a big gold framed mirror that was on the floor outside the bathroom just propped against the wall, as if imploring us to sneak it into the bathroom with us for our picture. So we did. Shh, don't tell the management. 

"Ok, go ahead and grab my boob. Just hold it. Yep, that's good." Cold butts on cold bathroom floors aside, just getting Cait to stop giggling was probably the most challenging part. "What should our level of difficulty be?" I asked Cait on the drive back to my house, where we planned to lie in bed, watch Friends, and prep our Shakespeare classes for next week (She's teaching Henry IV pt. 1, I'm teaching Richard III.) "I dunno, can you really quantify a cold butt?" She replied.

[drunkrenaissancepaintings]

Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, Andrea Solario (1506-07)

Date: February 3, 2015

Location: Galactic Pizza, Minneapolis

Drunkenness: 5/10

Level of difficulty: 1/10

--This one was easy. Single stall bathroom, lockable door, and a pizza plate graciously loaned to us by Eric at Galactic ("Would you like 10 inches, 12 inches, or 16 inches?" he was delighted to have had the opportunity to ask me). Aside from some directional commands I had to give Cait since she couldn't see her own phone ("Move left. A little more left. Too far left. Now up. Now tilt.") this was a cake walk. Average drunkenness might have been higher if I'd started drinking when Cait had, but alas she was a whole glass of wine ahead of me by the time I got there.