just based on from what i can remember from the early game i feel like blathers is probably on the island to do a field survey on the local fauna and the paleontological significance of the area. so anyway cut to blathers back in animal city doing his presentation during the yearly conference. the powerpoint concludes and he asks for questions. 

man in crowd: sir. sir may i ask–what is that in the background of the fourth slide

blathers: eh? oh! well, that’s one of the paintings which was kindly donated to me by this island’s inhabitants! isn’t it grand?

man in crowd, as his fellow academics begin to murmur: yes is…is that the…is that the real mona lisa, sir?

blathers: by my accounts i do believe it is!

man in crowd, now having to yell over the commotion: sir are you aware that that painting was stolen from the louvre in a highly publicized heist. it’s all over the news. how are you not aware of this

blathers: wot   

I swear to god they’re so dramatic. Even in art history they read into what an apple or fly means like BICH maybe they’re just in the painting chilling. Y DOES IT NEED A MEANING

Yo, makes me laugh that you say this. Because you’re actually right

At the time artists started painting still life (early renaissance), painters didn’t bother with meanings at all. It was a technical exercise. Seeing how good their techniques were

But painting is expensive as fuck and you gotta pay for pigments and shit, so you had to be able to sell your shitty still life, to the people who pay for your pigments and shit. But they didn’t want still life paintings, because it was… just food….. They wanted Jesus and bible scenes and such. Not apples and shit. Because rich people loved religion. And were pretentious as fuck. Why have an apple painting at home when you can have men freaking out over zombie Jesus

So artists were like ok, see, you don’t get it. The apple refers to the original sin, and all the fruits represent your wealth and such. But the skull’s there to remind you that your wealth doesn’t matter, you’ll die someday anyway

Because that was a popular thing at the time, being rich but having symbolic stuff that remind you that you’ll die someday despite being rich. Rich people were weird. And pretentious

So painters BULLSHITTED all that symbolic stuff around the things they put in their still life paintings to make the boring painting exercises appealing to the gullible (and pretentious) rich people that commissioned them. And rich people gobbled it aaaalllllll up

And that’s how we still have still life paintings from most famous renaissance artists today and that they’re in such good condition, because still life paintings became THE shit amongst rich people and they bought them and kept them at home. Instead of remaining stuck in a dusty, shitty painting workshop, to be forgotten beneath tons of other stuff and rot

And there was this whole lexicon and symbolism dictionary created around still life paintings at the time, like each object was meant to represent something and there began to be conventions and stuff

But they only ever were technical painting exercises

It never was that deep

This also reminds me of this freshman physics kid that hangs around our office and he tries to keep up with us and it’s hilariously embarrassing. Like we were doing quantum the other day which is a grad level class and he’s like frantically reading Schrodinger’s Wikipedia page and offering up useless nonsense like “uh uh Schrodinger’s cat!!” thanks kid we’re talking about applying the Dirac equation