Making art in a playful way: How do people find humour when they experience the artist's play?

This research is about the causal relationship between “play” and “humour”. This study explores play through Eastern and Western artworks from different periods, and the author also uses his own art practice as cases to analyse how to express humour in the creation of art. This is a cross-cultural research project and a study of artistic methods. The first section describes the author’s interest in “playfulness” in real life, then introduces several characteristics of play and discusses their definition through examples; the second section examines play in Western art through both ancient and modern aspects; Section three introduces how Chinese artists play and express humour in art. The author intersperses the theory of humour and the theory of play into the content of the first three sections to explain a range of concepts in humorous works, aiming to provide readers with a better understanding of playfulness in art. Section four is about the study of creative methods. This part introduces in detail eight creative methods of creating humour, and discusses the creation and theoretical methods of experimental art through examples of modern artworks. In the last part, the limitations, contribution and impact of the research are discussed, as well as the author’s views about the six years of PhD study, along with some thoughts about the future.