Industrial art is a form of art that uses common industrial goods as its medium. This can include things like metal sculptures, paintings, and machines. Industrial art is also often called mechanical art, though this term is more commonly used to refer to clocks and other smaller time pieces.

As an art form, industrial art has been around for centuries. Using metal, glass and other materials in a way that isn’t functional makes a piece of metal artwork a kind of industrial art, though the term is most commonly referred to when it comes to larger scale sculptures and the like.

Tinkerers have been fabricating their own works of industrial art since the invention of metal working over 5,000 years ago. However, it was not until the 19th century that industrial art became recognized as an artistic medium in its own right. The first exhibition of what would now be considered industrial art took place in London in 1865. Today there are a number of artists who work with industrial materials as their primary medium.*

Industrial art has been around since the Industrial Revolution, but the term didn’t come into common use until the 1960s. It describes a kind of structure, often large and made of metal, that is built for practical purposes such as housing machinery or supporting railway tracks. These structures are often considered ugly, since they are functional rather than decorative in nature.

The word “industrial” was first applied to art in 1851 by a British writer named John Ruskin, who used it to describe the structures he saw growing up near factories in England. He didn’t like them, but felt they expressed an important truth about humanity: that the work of civilization is best expressed through utilitarian structures like factories and bridges, rather than through art and architecture.

Industrial art is the process of transforming scrap metal into functional objects. While this may sound like a complicated task, it can be accomplished in a variety of ways that are extremely simple.

The first step to creating industrial art is to collect some scrap metal. This can be done without spending any money by visiting industrial areas such as junkyards or hearing aid factories and simply picking through the piles of junk. You don’t want to pick anything that’s too dirty or rusty, but almost anything else will work just fine.

Tumbling is the next step to creating your industrial art. Tumbling involves using a machine with small rocks inside to smooth out your piece of metal and make it look nicer. You can usually find tumblers at jewelry stores, as they are often used for polishing precious stones or metals. Tumbling is an especially good way to polish rusty metal into something beautiful, which you may have already guessed from the name “tumbling.”

Forging is similar to tumbling, except it uses sand instead of rocks. The sand acts like tiny grinding wheels and smooths out the surface of your metal object even more than tumbling does. Forging works well on small pieces while tumbling works better on big ones.

After tumbling or forging

Industrial art is a term that refers to works of art made by machines. The machines used in industrial art are usually mass produced and are frequently constructed from metal, hence the term.

The term was coined by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, who referred to his own work as “industrial art.” Many works of art created before this time can be considered industrial as they used machines to make them. For example, J.M.W. Turner’s work showed a fascination with the effects of steam power and many of his later paintings were rendered on canvases made by machine. But it was not until Duchamp introduced the phrase “industrial artist” that art made by machines came to have its own name.

The most common form of industrial art production is computer numerically controlled (CNC) because it allows for the mass production of parts that can be assembled into sculptures using welding or riveting. CNC production is also known as machining or milling.*

A more intricate process is die casting, which involves taking a model made from wax and using it as a mold for molten metal, which is then poured into the mold and allowed to cool, hardening into an exact replica as if cast from a mold.*

Industrial art has been around since

Industrial art is the art of the industrial revolution, roughly 1760 to 1860. It’s a period of time that has only recently been recognized as an artistic period. All the art we are most accustomed to seeing–the classical landscape paintings, the Renaissance marble statues–is considered “Fine Art”. Industrial Art is art made for patrons–Earls and Dukes and Kings, but most commonly the middle class, who wanted something that would remind them of their wealth and power.

‘the middle class’ in this context includes people like the owners of iron foundries who hired designers to make a particular kind of decorative table or fireplace or vase or bookcase. In fact it’s hard to tell where fine art left off and industrial art began because many designers also made fine art sculpture or paintings on the side.

I’m going to describe a few periods of Industrial Art and some representative pieces. I’ve chosen some pretty well known pieces because I think this blog might be read by people who walk around historic buildings and see objects which are too big to fit in their pocketbooks so they don’t stop to look at them. Or maybe they’re just plain beautiful and never noticed because they’re not old enough to be considered ‘fine.’

Industrial art is the art of the machine age. It started in the late nineteenth century with the industrial revolution and has continued to this day. Industrial art as a term was coined by Dona Brown in her book, “Industrial Art”, published by Watson-Guptill in New York in 1977. Her definition of industrial art is “the functional, utilitarian, beautiful and sometimes whimsical objects derived from industrial processes.”

In the early days of industry, steel mills and other factories depended on skilled craftsmen who were responsible for all phases of production from design to fabrication to installation. Over time it became more efficient for manufacturers to handle only one part of production and outsource the rest. This approach resulted in a separation between designers and fabricators.

The term ‘industrial artist’ encompasses all fields related to production. These include industrial design, fabrication, reclamation/recycling, installation art and architecture. There are many people who work at an industrial level without calling themselves industrial artists. One example would be a machinist or tool and die maker who fabricates parts for industry but never thinks of themselves as artists.”

The real story of the machine age is not about industrialization but about artistic modernism. The Bauhaus, the Russian Constructivists, and other groups around the world worked to shape a new worldview that viewed machines as aesthetic objects.

The Futurists in Italy were one of these groups, but they were in many ways the most extreme, perhaps because they came from a country that had not yet become industrialized. They saw themselves as poets of speed and violence and war. Marinetti’s famous 1909 manifesto begins with the following call: “We will glorify war – the world’s only hygiene – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.”

This sounds like it could have come from a fascist manifesto. But Marinetti was not actually a fascist; he was an anarchist who wanted to destroy all forms of political organization and return humanity to its primitive state. And it wasn’t until after World War II that fascists adopted Futurist aesthetics. In 1910, however, it was still possible to imagine that war might be a cleansing force for humanity if properly harnessed by technology.

The Futurist Manifesto famously ends with this passage: “We will sing of great crowds excited by