Art History

arthistory.jpg The history of art program offers the opportunity to study “images” ranging from painting, sculpture, and industrial arts to photography, film, architecture, and landscaping.

Research involves various methods, including the study of the form and meaning of artistic works and consideration of a work’s background and the history of its reception. The course aims to eschew specific ideas and preconceptions in favor of empirical research based on precise observations of artistic works.

Art history is split into two territories: the history of art in Japan and the East, and Western art history. The department is currently home to five full-time and associate professors as well as one scholar from the Museum of Osaka University who works concurrently as a lecturer, 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, history, and literature, while also engaging in exchanges with overseas researchers. In recent years, the program has invested in computer-based visual image database creation and digital image processing.

Professors

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