Joseph Beuys’s The End of the Twentieth Century addresses themes of finality and death, but also ideas of regeneration through nature. Blocks of basalt are arranged across the floor. Basalt is volcanic in origin, and Beuys associated it with the earth’s ancient energy and geological time. Beuys cut a conical hole in each of the slabs. He then ‘treated’ this ‘wound’ by lining the hollow with insulating clay and felt, before re-inserting the stone plugs. These filled cavities imply the potential for healing, suggesting the possibility of renewal at the end of a violent and destructive century.