The thematic interpretation of the traditional child's plays in the art of painting (The case study of Antalya)

As a broad concept, culture encompasses those physical and spiritual values that establish the unique identity of a society in historical perspectives. Culture is preserved through transmission between successive generations. This transmission becomes possible not only through tangible cultural heritage such as works of art and architecture, but also through intangible cultural heritage such as behavioral patterns of traditional life. Nevertheless traditional cultures involving unique local characteristics face the danger of extinction due to the transformations introduced by contemporary globalization processes. Child's plays are important elements of intangible cultural heritage. As an important cultural heritage in terms of learning process within childs' growth, child's plays constitute a universal research topic of folkloric studies. Like in other fields of cultural heritage, Turkey is quite rich in terms of traditional child's plays. Antalya is selected as a case study for research in traditional child's plays because this region has a quite varied geography encompassing coastal and mountainous sections and because the land bears the stamp of the characteristic Yörük (semi-nomadic) culture. Antalya also provides a fruitful ground for oral sources. The main objectives of this thesis is to consider child's play as an intersection between the fields of folklore and painting, to organize the available literal sources, to interpret the issue as a theme in the art of painting, to visualize and document the knowledge deciphered through scientific sources and to transmit this information to the future.