Tehran Art Expo and Its Impact on the Trend of Contemporary Painting in Iran

In the process of creating and presenting artworks, the economy of art has been always a challenging issue. In this respect, some advocate the idea of marketing artworks which is more commonly known as art expos. Playing the role of the link between artists and clients (or patrons), art auctions both give credit to the quality of the artworks presented and make sure the clients of buying an artistically valuable artwork. In this regard, Tehran Art Expo is one of the best in Iran. Nevertheless, the extent to which Tehran Art Expo has had any impact on the Iranian artists is an issue which has not been studied in detail. In fact, what impact have the art auctions had on the Iranian artist and to what extent have they been motivated by holding national art expos are the main questions of the present study. Moridi and his colleagues (2009) showed in a research entitled the effective factors on the price of paintings presented in Tehran Art Galleries that, in terms of prices of the artworks being influenced, there is a significant relationship between aesthetic factors (such as style, technique, visual effects, etc.) and non-aesthetic factors (such as painters’ age and gender and the physical specifications of the artwork like size and the likes). Similarly, Ebrahimi and his colleagues (2015) in an investigation entitled the art economy and the weak points of Tehran Art Expo concluded that holding art expos, galleries and auctions helps the promotion of art economy considerably. Likewise, in a study entitled the influence of economy, culture and art on the Iranian contemporary paintings, Mobini and his colleagues (2015) showed that Tehran Art Expo’s focusing on visual arts has attracted investors in this field. Given that in the mentioned studies the factors motivating the artists, irrespective of the issue that the amateur artists are able to present their artworks in such expos/galleries/ auctions as well as the artists’ attitude towards the auctions, has not been examined. The present study aimed to examine the mentioned factors and to inspect the influence of holding auctions on the art economy.