The Position of Garden Sculpture in Tehran Urban Space

Garden Sculpture is one of the most complete examples of interaction between art and nature that has a history in the West and European culture that its classical form dates back to ancient times. After modern times, Garden Sculpture is being considered as a new kind of environmental art that manifest the relationship between human, nature and landscape. In Tehran, following the Qajar kings travelling to Europe and experiencing the presence of sculpture in urban space, specifically in public garden and parks, sculpture, as a kind of public art was entered to the urban space and in somehow was emplaced in private garden of Qajar era as a symbol of renewal. Meanwhile, the gardening in Qajar era that was the last efforts of Iranian gardening, gradually replaced by European garden confronting with the fundamental changes in western-style urbanizing patterns. During the Pahlavi era, by getting empowered the stream of modernization patronizing, the reviving of park building according to western-style and on the other side the presence of sculpture in urban spaces were increased, but no artwork resembling garden sculpture according to its original meaning was made in city of Tehran. After nearly a decade of the Islamic Revolution, gradually the numbers of urban sculptures have been increased and although the thought of emplacing a set of sculptures in public spaces has been resulted in implementation of the idea, in number of parks and green-space areas including the green area of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) and the garden of Iranian artists forum, but it seems the urban artworks of Tehran are still away from the original structure and concept of garden sculpture.
This article is seeking to answer the question of why garden sculpture, failed to find a place in Tehran urban space, after almost a century; and concludes - by accepting the idea that garden sculpture has been a kind of art work along with the tradition of gardening and also is an artistic expressing of people relationship of each land with nature -that by replacing garden with park and destruction the context of forming garden sculpture, it seems that we have never been successful in Iranianized this imported phenomenon and having garden sculpture with an Iranian identity.