Art as Business Enterprise in Nigeria: A Discourse on the Challenges and Prospects in Emerging Painting Markets

Abstract

The intersection of art and commerce is a compound space where creativity is capable of meeting market realities. This paper is a discourse of how artists (painters) and other stakeholder of the art industry perceive, negotiate, and assign value to artworks and make the business a sustainable venture of income in Nigeria’s fuzzy economy. The study reveals that artists often struggle to balance their creativity with commercial feasibility. It emphasized that researchers’ and policymakers must understand the critical influencers of the business of art in Nigeria, which include cultural authenticity, pricing and value perception, marketing dynamics, and policy or institutional structures. The study concludes that to solve this issue, stakeholders in the art industry must understand the behavior of art market in Nigeria requires an aesthetic and business lens, which offers implications for art practitioners, art educators, art managers policymakers in the economies of talent or creativity, in order to succeed economically, and also compete on the global art stage.

Keywords: Business Enterprise, Art Industry, Painting Market, Pricing and Value of Painting, Policy and Institutional Structures.