Contrary to the usual avant-garde narratives, which primarily revolve around dynamic processes, this volume explores the static side of modernism. Piet Mondrian, Oskar Schlemmer and Gottfried Benn are presented as "aesthetic staticians" who, like engineers, are in search of balance. Their works paradigmatically demonstrate that there is far more to the concept of statics than just mathematical formulae and technoid forms. In addition to these three avant-gardists, numerous other artists and writers also have their say. In this way, a dazzling cultural and theoretical-historical panorama unfolds. On the one hand, "static modernism" deals with the history and aesthetics of iron architecture, which are closely interwoven with mechanical statics, and on the other, it offers space for the search for harmony, tranquillity, universality and monumentality. The desire to create something static and therefore equilibristic is only at first glance something that is unpopular in an age of pure dynamism. On the contrary, it is clear that statics permeates and characterises classical modernism.

Nicole Rettig, University of Konstanz, Germany.