A Survey on the Position of Iran’s Contemporary Figurative Painting in Economy of Art

In this survey the position of figurative painting in Iran’s contemporary art economy is studied with statistical population of Tehran’s auction. Despite the fact that the economy of art has always been denied by the artists, patronage is the most contributing factor that forms and maintains all the art movements through ages. On the other hand, figurative painting in Persian contemporary art has always competed with abstract paintings, calligraphy and miniatures to find purchasers as the foreign purchasers are more interested to buy calligraphy and miniatures. In this research, we have tried to find out how is the figurative painting’s position in the art economy with the case study of financial transactions in the national market, how they worth aesthetically and in which way are they created to satisfy the market or serve the needs of aesthetic. The main reason of conducting this documentary research is to discover the influence of the national market on the Persian figurative painting movement. The result is, according to accumulated data, among all 841 artworks which were sold in Tehran’s auction, only 60 of them are included as figurative paintings with aforementioned defined features in this survey, it is noteworthy to mention that only 10 percent of all transactions are allocated to such paintings. The highest sales were in December 2016 with total amount of 879 million IRR.  Finally it is concluded that figurative paintings occupy only 10 percent of the whole volume of financial transactions so it can be said that the figurative painting’s place is not secured in the national market. We should mention that in early auctions most of the artworks which were chosen, had the features of market’s values but gradually it improved and due to governmental subsidization it is anticipated that the quality of sold artworks in national market will have a significant impact on the maintenance  of figurative painting in future. Supplementary to this, the most expensive sold artworks have no market oriented features; this means that those artworks which have academically aesthetic values attract more purchasers so their market value is higher. This is a sign of the increasing tendency to this form of art. Despite this, the figurative painting has only 2 percent share in all transactions and according to abundance they are only 10 percent of all sold works of art. This indicates that, figurative painting has not yet secured its place in economic transactions. Figurative painting of Iran has already been surveyed by many researchers but its economic position which is the main purpose of this research, has never been studied before. The subject-related essays are “The mechanism of artworks pricing and determining pricing group in Tehran auction” by Mohammadjavad Mohammadi and  Mohammadreza,Moridi in A symposium of Iran’s art economy book, “Contributing factors in evolution of art economy process” by Samaneh Mohammadi in Pajoheshe-Honar research journal, “Processes, trends and perspectives of art economy” by Lotfali Agheli in A symposium of Iran’s art economy book and “An Introduction to the structure and logic of the visual arts” by Hamidreza Sheshjavani. Another research which is related to contemporary art is “A comparison of the viws of Ziapour and Greenberg of the concept of modern painting” conducted by Reza Rafie Rad and Alireza Akrami Hasan Kiyadeh in Alzahra research journal of graphic arts and painting. The research method is analytical and resources used were documentary. Statistical population was Tehran auction with the target group of sold artworks since 1978 by non-random and judgmental sampling approach.  The way of data analyzing was inductive reasoning.