Jaysonmusson - Blog Posts

This week I found myself talking about artist Jayson Musson’s “Art Thoughtz” again. The series of videos are done in a classic YouTube style, with low grade effects, text, and even complete with a low resolution webcam video of Jayson Musson in his persona “Hennessy Youngman”. The videos themselves challenge the art world with humor and exaggeration, spliced together with more seriously delivered well thought out critiques. Musson’s critiques on the history and present state of art bring a fresh level of awareness with a modern way of sharing and creating,YouTube. Critiques are presented in a way that does not shy away from the low brow conventions of the internet but they are embraced and satirized, though shown to be just as ridiculous as much of art’s history. It becomes apparent that these videos humorously lecture a lot about mediums and art culture, but in the modern and very meta stage of the 2010’s, this is clearly art in itself.

Hennessy Youngman's "Art Thoughtz episode on institutional critique.

Left: Jayson Musson as “Jay” with “Ollie.” Jayson Musson, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, His History of Art, 2022. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño. Right: Joseph Beuys during his performance of How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, Schelma Gallery, Dusseldorf, 26 November 1965. Photo credit: Walter Vogel.

I went to Philly to see His History of Art by Jayson Musson at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and wrote about its pedagogical use of satire to challenge art educational conventions on my blog Artfully Learning. Read about it in the post "Whose History of Art?"