| Home -> Paul Elder - > The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition - Fountain of Youth | |||
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Fountain of Youth
Colonnade, Tower of Jewels |
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| Within the colonnades of the Tower are two wall-fountains by American women. The Fountain of Youth in the eastern colonnade is the work of Edith Woodman Burroughs. She has given us the eternally desired fountain in a new aspect, not as the legendary restorative that changes age to adolescence, but as the fount of perpetual youth that keeps inspiring and vivifying the race and every stage of our life. An exquisite nude girl stands in a beautifully balanced archway rising like a flower from a pedestal on which are seen, like roots, vaguely outlined, the faces of her ancestors. She is Youth, the center of life, for which the world, its dreams and its rewards are made. The side panels show the ships of life laden with the aged and manned by infants, off on the sea of time on the endless quests upon which youth and desire for its fulfillment's keep the world launched. However, the enduring charm of the fountain certainly comes from the little-girlhood of the central figure, the gentle, expectant sweetness of waning childhood and the perfect purity of the emotion it produces. |
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