"Closeup: lessons in the art of seeing African sculpture" presents African art objects of exceptional aesthetic quality from an American Collection and the Horstmann collection. This book makes available for the first time sensitive new photographs, unknown masterpieces and famous works. But the book is more than an assemblage of masterpieces of African art. It is an exercise in how to look at African sculpture - and by extension - at all sculpture. This theme is fully developed in the essay and texts, and carries through the photographs which are a veritable invitation to see African sculpture in a new way. The book opens with a foreword by Susan Vogel, Executive Director of The Center for African Art, and an expert on African art and aesthetics. Dr. Vogel demonstrates that the forms of African art suggest a particular relationship to the viewer; the images express an underlying assumption that making a sculpture may be more important than displaying it for a human viewer. A photographic essay by Jerry L. Thompson, recognized as a superlative photographer of sculpture, shows both detail and full views of the most complex objects, with his thoughts on the subject of looking at sculpture. Thompson is eminently suited as a guide to nuanced perceptions about sculpture. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, he has served on the faculty of Yale University, as photographer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of two large African collections, and of sculpture in the American Wing. This book title derives from the critic Hilton Kramer's description of Thompson's work as "lessons in the art of seeing." The second half of the book presents the two collections in color photographs, accompanied by Susan Vogel's formal analysis of the sculptures that most interest her. To guide the eye and enrich the experience of the viewer, she describes salient points of style, design and technique. A full listing of each object with its essential facts by Anne D'Alleva follows. - Dust jacket.