Joseph Beuys: Ritual Artist

"The End of The Twentieth Century," shown above, is a sobering piece. The chunks of stone suggest an anticlimactic--if not wholly backward--"end" to the 20th century. Crude forms of rock recall a primitive caveman-like era that seems to endure for man at the turn of the most recent century, untouched by technological advances and gilded "progress." Moreover, the uniform and coffin-like shape of the stones, each with a black circle where a face may be, suggest graves, bodies, or perhaps ruins. I interpret this piece as saying that after two World Wars and no shortage of poverty, deceit, treachery, or complacency, the twenty-first century will be built on a pile of cultural, social, and structural rubble. It seems Beuys alludes to the primitive brutality and ignorance exhibited by man over the last hundred years, and the destruction that should not be forgotten as the new century begins.