MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Voglie vedere i miei montagne was Joseph Beuys' first room-filling installation, and was especially made for a space in the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. The work derives its title from the last words of 19th-century painter Giovanni Segantini, who wanted to see the Alps from his deathbed for the last time. Together forming a sort of landscape, the objects – including furniture from his youth – stand on copper plates arranged around a lamp that is hanging low above a piece of felt. Numerous words are written on the objects in Celtic and German as well as the Rhaeto-Romance dialect of Northern Italy and Switzerland. The word “Vadrec[t]” on the wardrobe means glacier, “Valun” written on the bed means valley, “Sciora” on the flat box is the name of a mountain in Switzerland, and “Penninus” is the name of a mountain god.