The fountain that won't look at you
George Minne's Fountain of Kneeling Youths shows five nude adolescents, heads bowed, sealed in their own thoughts. The figures are fragile and inward, and the whole piece carries a heavy emotional charge — it's often read as a symbol of young people condemned to meditate by fear of life. This is Symbolist sculpture at its most intense, and it asks nothing of you except that you slow down and feel the weight. Ghent's gentler, stranger masterpiece.