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Pinterest & The Arts: How A Social Networking Site Is Changing Art Culture

 

The social media pool is ever expanding and changing and this year it has added yet another tool in its toolbox. Pinterest has exploded in 2012, and gives no signs of slowing down. What many people have come to realize about Pinterest is that you either love it or hate it, there is rarely any middle ground, and luckily many people love it, thus resulting in its 10 million unique visitors of any website in the United States. Pinterest is the product of and is a virtual pin-up board where users “pin” items from all across the web onto their specialized boards of interest. Pinterest has become very popular among designers, artists, stylists, crafters, etc. Pinterest has several categories that pinners can pin under, including but not limited to:  art, DIY & crafts, food/beverage, cars/motorcycles, products, for the home, and more. Pinterest covers a wide spectrum of interests which one can concur contributes it the success of the site. The brilliance behind Pinterest is that it allows users to come across products and items they otherwise may never have known about. 

 

One of the most popular categories on Pinterest is art. Pinterest is revolutionizing the art world in many ways. Pinterest is reconstructing arts definition, introducing art to people who may have otherwise never engaged in it, giving unknown artists a public space to showcase their artwork, and bridging the gap between high and low art culture.

 

There are other digital communities that showcase art such as Artsy, Google Art Project and others but what makes Pinterest unique from all the others is that Pinterest has so many other categories other than art. For the other sites, one would already have to have some interest in art in order to seek these sites out, however with Pinterest someone who is interested in motorcycles, may stumble upon the arts section and find a new appreciation and love for art that they never even knew they had. By opening the art world to others, this changes art culture, For so long art has been portrayed as a medium that is participated in by the elite, or those with a certain amount of money and education in society.; By breaking down those barriers in the digital space Pinterest is allowing literally anyone with Internet access into the art world. Pinterest allows for just that, everyone to participate in the art world, whether by creating it or engaging in it.

Pinterest is bridging the gap between high and low art. Because so many of the users on Pinterest have so many interests, many of them may not be familiar with the art world or the differences between high and low art. High art is defined as: “art which deals with lofty and dignified subjects and is characterized by an elevated style avoiding all meretricious display” (Wikipedia). On the other hand low art is considered to be “the lesser or minor arts, including the decorative or applied arts, with the inference that these are low partly because of shoddy manufacturing in inferior materials of superficial kitsch, simply catering to popular taste, unreflective acceptance of realism” Wikipedia). Personally, whenever I add something to my art board I am not concerned at all whether or not the piece is considered high or low art. My appreciation for the art pieces I choose to “pin” on my art board is for their aesthetic value, and my personal feelings toward the piece.

 

Pinterest is changing art because of its participatory nature. The Internet itself is structured to be participatory. O’Reilly says in his article “The Architecture of Participation” “any system designed around communication protocols is intrinsically designed for participation”. That being said, Pinterest is not only allowing people to participate with each other and engage with art, they are changing the way people participate. Before this digital space that we have known as the Internet, participating in art has mostly been done in museums and galleries, but now with social media networking sites such as Pibnterest we are participating and engaging with one another, and with art in new and profound ways.Finally, Pinterest is allowing everyone to have access to the art world; it is allowing literally anyone to create art. I would like to take a theoretical approach to understanding Pinterest and how it is operating in the art world. I would like to examine Roland Barthes and “The Death of the Author” as well as Walter Benjamin and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” as well as Roland Barthes and “The Death of the Author”.

 

 To begin working through Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” I would like to examine two key concepts; the decay of the aura and the democratization of art. The aura of art, is what can be described as arts authenticity, what makes art an original versus something that is reproduced. The democratization of art is closely linked to the decay of the aura because some would argue that when you democratize art; that is to say you make it accessible to anyone and allow anyone to create art or engage in it that the “aura” or authenticity becomes lost. Every piece of art work that is showcased through Pinterest has been mechanically reproduced, what we see on the screen is not the authentic version, no the authentic version is probably housed in some gallery or museum or even the artists home, what appears to us in this digital space is a reproduction. Benjamin says this about mechanical reproduction “mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility”. This says to me that when we reproduce art we open up even more possibilities for it and can use it in so many more ways, the art can be shared with the masses. What can be said about the democratization of art? Is this a good thing? On one hand it allows anyone to create art and participate in the art world, but on the other the “aura” is lost. Is this true? Do we believe that? I would argue that even though mechanical reproduction gets away from the “authentic” artwork itself, it still does not change how you react and the connection you feel when you are drawn to a piece of art. For me the aesthetic and emotional connection are much more important than having an authentic piece of artwork. For me the democratization of art trumps the decay of the aura.

 

 To push this theory in further I will now examine Roland Barthes and his classic piece “The Death of the Author”. 20th century theorist Roland Barthes would highly be in favor of the Pinterest model. Barthes built most of his theory around the idea that “everyone is an artist”. On Pinterest literally “everyone is an artist”, there is no barrier preventing anyone from painting an abstract, or sketching a comic that will prevent them from adding their work to Pinterest for the world to see. Roland Barthes in his essay “The Death of the Author”, the importance of not having an author, or knowing who the author is. When you eliminate the author (in arts case the artist), the art speaks for itself and the artist becomes less important. Barthes says this about the elimination of the author “the removal of the author is not merely an historical fact or an act of writing, it utterly transforms the modern text, the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent”. For example is a Van Gogh art piece truly art and special because of the actual art itself or does it carry such high value because of  Van Gogh himself and the prestige and clout that surrounds his name? Pinterest allows unknown artists to showcase their work in a space where their art can speak for itself in the ways it is visually pleasing and makes them feel on a deeper level.

 

There is no doubt that Pinterest is changing the art world and how we think and interact within it. It is allowing anyone to participate in a sub-culture of society that has long been a past-time of the elite. It is connecting unknown artists with the world, and allowing their art to be seen, and it is allowing changing social networking, because people are more engaged than ever before. Pinterest is new, but it is safe to say Pinterest is here to say and all of its impact in the art world has yet to be uncovered.

 

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.