Refined Eye, Passionate Heart: African Art from the Leslie Sacks Collection is a 320 page catalogue on the modernist art dealer Leslie Sacks’ collection of African art. Unfortunately Leslie Sacks passed away earlier this year (obituary), but not before he had seen the advance copies of the book. The publication is the fruit of nearly three years of work under the direction of Amanda M. Maples. It unveils for the first time a selection of 187 African art objects from the Sacks collection, accompanied by 38 essays by 20 researchers in the field of African art: Marla C. Berns, Frederic Cloth, Herbert M. Cole, Michael W. Conner, Henry J. Drewal, Martha J. Ehrlich, Jordan A. Fenton, Till Förster, Frederick J. Lamp, Alain Lecomte, Amanda Maples, Daniel Mato, Morgan Mbeky, Tamara Northern, Mary Nooter Robers, Allen F. Roberts, Scott Rodolitz and Jerry Vogel. I wrote four texts on objects from the Dan and Wè. Karel Nel, artist and professor at the University of Witwaterstrand in Johannesburg, wrote the foreword. Together with Frank Herreman, former exhibition director at the Museum for African Art in New York, I also wrote an introduction to Primitivism which explores the relationship between African art, modern and contemporary art. The texts are accompanied by over one hundred colour photographs by Donald Cole.
