Play in the childhood, play in art

In this report titled "Play in the Childhood, Play in Art", while treating the role of play and toy in art, it is taken a way that leading us to childhood by investigating the place and functionality of them in human life. The Childhood is a period of time, full of the emotions that have deeply affected us. For the children, play and toy is an occasion for describing their feelings, for learning and understanding the life. It also reflects the cultural, economic and social characteristics of the era. Play is in fact a communication method. The communication, on the other hand, by the reason of being among the first social skills of human, is one of the constituents of play and even though we do not realize that, it keeps an indispensable place in playing process for social creatures like us. As for our childhood, it is a period during which we intensively conserve play. While treating all this communication network, it is investigated how play emerged and it is also searched the similarities or differences of play from the past to the present and the effect of the game and toy in life. In addition, the concept of play has been investigated in different disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and psychology. As with many disciplines, the concept of play has inspired art movements and artists. This report gives examples of how artists, with the urge to play, produced their works from the past to the present. Play and toy, as a means of communication in life, are considered also by the artist as a communication method in art. In this report, play is supported by personal studies and it is emphasized the finding of new personal searches, new expression possibilities and new contexts in art. In the applications chapter, it is tried to make personal contributions to the art of today with a view that play is the communication tool that everyone can establish with themselves and with each other. Keywords: Play, Toys, Childhood, Communication, Memory, Art