Art Symbol Analysis

Art represents the relationship between ideas, memory, and meaning. When Luc grants Addie immortality, it comes at a great cost: she will be impervious to time and decay, but she’s doomed to be immediately forgotten by everyone she meets. She’s also unable to write or speak her name, be photographed, or tell anybody her life story. In other words, no matter how much time Addie spends on earth, she’ll never be able to touch anybody’s life in a meaningful way or leave her mark on the world—she’s immortal, but she’s also invisible. Addie’s invisibility forces her to ask herself difficult questions about how her life can be meaningful when her cursed invisibility makes it so that nobody knows that she existed. Addie finds a solution to this problem in art, which values subjective ideas over objective memories. Though Addie can’t leave any physical, tangible trace of herself behind, she can inspire artists to project an “idea,” an essence of her onto their art. Luc originally claims that “ideas are so much wilder than memories” to taunt Addie after he accuses her of thievery and gets her kicked out Madame Geoffrin’s salon, insinuating that even if the partygoers don’t remember Addie specifically, they’ll subconsciously mistrust her because Luc has planted that idea in their heads.

With art, Addie upends Luc’s taunt and uses it to her advantage: the artists she associates with through the centuries might not remember her specifically, but she can still engage meaningfully with them, inspire them with ideas for their work, and let these abstract ideas mark her place in history in lieu of concrete memory. Addie becomes a muse to artists throughout the centuries, posing for and inspiring numerous paintings and sculptures, including those of Sam, a New York painter with whom Addie has a passionate affair, and Matteo, a Venetian artist. Sam immortalizes Addie through a painting of a night sky that captures Addie’s essence (including seven stars to denote Addie’s trademark freckles). Matteo sketches Addie lying in bed, and though he can’t remember her specifically, his memory of the artistic ideas she inspired becomes the subject of some of his most important works. That Addie inspires artists to remember and immortalize the “idea” of her in their art (thereby undermining Luc’s determination that she remain meaningless and invisible) underscores art’s power to express the ideas that render life meaningful.