Particular Mind

"THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS a Black man in rags and fetters being led through the street by a white man robed in white, trailed by a flock of spectators. The year was 1968, the setting an arts festival in Amalfi called Arte povera più azioni povere (Poor Art Plus Poor Actions); the scene was part of a play, L'uomo ammaestrato (The Trained Man), created by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and his theater collective, Lo Zoo."

"The guest performer playing the Trained Man was an American named Henry Martin, at that point twenty-six years old and the author of a mere handful of art writings, yet already well known to the assembled artists, critics, and curators. Martin's reputation among them as a critic of exceptional intelligence and integrity-who was exceptional in other, less tangible ways as well-would persist and grow but remain confined to the cognoscenti until Martin died, still in Italy, in 2022."

Henry Martin relocated from New York to Italy in the mid-1960s and became deeply embedded in the Italian art scene. He taught a Chaucer course in Milan after leaving graduate school and built close friendships with artists, participating in performances such as Michelangelo Pistoletto's 1968 play L'uomo ammaestrato in Amalfi. Martin earned a reputation among artists and curators as a critic of exceptional intelligence and integrity, producing a modest body of art writings while remaining something of an enigma. His collaborations, correspondence, interviews, and images reveal a life interwoven with avant-garde practices and personal loyalty, ending with his death in Italy in 2022.

Read at Artforum