The History of Art program offers an opportunity to study “images,” ranging from painting, sculpture, and industrial arts to photography, film, architecture, and landscaping. Such research involves various methods, including the study of the form and meaning of artistic works as well as considering the background of a piece and the history of its reception. The course aims to eschew subjectivity and impressions in favor of empirical research based on accurate observations of artistic works.
Art history is divided into two territories: The history of art in Japan and Eastern and Western art history. The faculty is currently home to five full-time professors and associate professors as well as one professor from the Museum of Osaka University, who works concurrently as a lecturer in art history, all of whom offer a wide variety of classes for students. The program at Osaka University is one of the most substantial art history courses in the country.
The faculty actively promotes collaboration with researchers in related departments, such as aesthetics and the science of literary arts, musicology and theater studies, and history and literature, while also engaging in exchanges with overseas researchers. In recent years, the program has invested efforts in computer-based visual image database creation and digital image processing.

Professors

KODERA, Tsukasa (Doctor der Letteren)

History of Modern Art; Studies on "Modernist iconoclasm", Art History and the Jew

HASHIZUME, Setsuya (M.Arts.)

Japanese Art History; History of Early Modern and Modern Paintings

FUJIOKA, Yutaka (M.Arts)

History of Buddhist Art; Sculpture of the Kamakura Period, Art on the Worship of Prince Shotoku, Art on Japanese Mountaineering Asceticism, Chinese Buddhist Stone Sculpture, Sculpture of the Sui Dynasty

OKADA, Hiroshige (M.Lit.)

Reneassance and Baroque Art; Studies in Spanish Art, Art and Interculural Contacts in Latin American Colonies

KUWAKINO, Koji (Ph.D.)

History of Italian Art and Architecture, History of Science, History of Western Garden

Associate professor

KADOWAKI, Mutsumi (Ph.D.)

History of Japanese Art; Paintings of middle and early modern  period