PHILADELPHIA – The movie set on display in the Fabric Workshop and Museum looks like a gift shop in a museum gone all wrong. A copy of Michelangelo’s “Pietà” has been turned into a chair by removing most of Jesus’ body to make room for a pillow. A nude figure from Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907) is represented in three dimensions as a coat rack. The anamorphic skull image in Hans Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’ (1533) forms the surface of a coffee table. And in the midst of it all sits a large animatronic doll: a scruffy gray pothead rabbit named Ollie.
You have entered the world of ‘His History of Art’, Jayson Musson’s first museum solo exhibition. It consists of three videos shot at the Fabric Workshop and played on large, individual screens, along with the set and a behind-the-scenes gallery showing how the work was created. The project uses sitcoms, children’s educational TV, performance art, and art history lectures to create something crazy and profound.
Musson stars in the videos as a collector named Jay, who explains the relevance of art and its history to his roommate Ollie, with the help of historical guests like Picasso and the Venus of Willendorf (played by an actress ensconced in an oversized costume made of foam, sand and resin). Jay speaks in a lilting tone, channeling something of Mr. Rogers, but his elocution is often condescending and his lessons harsh: “Since man first put on pants and called himself civilized, the first thing he did was create art that on his neighbors who weren’t wearing pants,” he says in the first episode. Many of the jokes are interrupted by a laugh track.
If you recognize Musson’s name or face — or his kind of painfully honest humor — chances are you’re thinking of Hennessy Youngman, the character he came up with during his graduation. The child of Jamaican immigrants, Musson grew up in Spring Valley, a suburb of New York City, and moved to Philadelphia to study (a BFA from the University of the Arts). He stayed and spent his twenties immersed in the city’s DIY creative scene, which meant holding service jobs while making work and performing and touring with the rap group Plastic Little. After a decade of that life, he decided to get an MFA, looking for more stability.
In 2009, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, but found it baffling at first. “It was a culture shock to enter an MFA environment from my ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ pirate ship ass 20s,” Musson said in an interview in a small Philadelphia park near a coffee shop where he once worked. .
To cope, he started making short videos in which, under the guise of a hip-hop savant, he mockingly explained the main concepts in contemporary art – “performance art is a pre-internet method of irritating groups of people using your body and voice, working together to create a compelling spectacle that magnifies the annoyance” — and offered advice on how to succeed as an artist (tip #1: “be white”).
Hennessy Youngman wore gold necklaces and hats with the faces of cartoon and cartoon characters on them. The content of the videos was often hilarious, but the premise also related to the predominantly white art world: What did it say about them if the humor depended on their expectation that this type of black figure wouldn’t or shouldn’t belong there?
“Psychologically, making it work helped me get through graduate school,” said Musson, who is personally lovable and much softer than his boastful nature.
He started posting the videos, titled ‘Art Thoughtz’, on YouTube in 2010 – and quickly became famous. Or at least, world famous.
“When we started distributing it, it was like wildfire,” said dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, whose gallery, Salon 94, represented Musson in New York City from 2012 until it closed last year. She met Musson through another artist, but she had also watched and was deeply impressed by ‘Art Thought’.
“He can write, act, make art,” she continued. “He’s a Renaissance artist.”
“Art Thoughtz” catapulted Musson into the limelight, bringing new resources and opportunities. He used them to avoid doing what Hennessy, or even Jay, would have advised: boosting his brand by making more videos. Instead, he created objects, such as Coogi sweaters which he cut and re-sewn into abstract, painting-like compositions, as well as full-scale realizations of the faux Modern artwork drawn by the cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller in his comic strip ‘Nancy’.
“It’s good to have eyes and a conversation about your work, but you need to know when things need to end,” Musson said. “And you have to try to end them on your terms or else you’ll be committed to something you made 15 years ago.”
In addition to discrete series of objects displayed in galleries, his output since “Art Thoughtz” includes pieces released directly to the Internet, such as three episodes of “The Adventures of Jamel,” a web series about a time-traveling B-boy; and pop music mixes sarcastically referred to as “CVS Bangers.” Such an array may seem scattered, but it is the hallmark of someone who is constantly coming up with and trying out ideas.
There are also continuous lines, conceptual currents that Musson carries with him, such as an interest in cartoons and comics, which he liked to read and make as a child. His father, a graphic designer, would cut comic strips for him at his request with an Exacto knife. “I’d stick them to my wall or let them talk,” Musson said. “I wanted them as isolated forms, out of their world and on the wall.”
Another common thread is humor, which he calls ‘the most important thing’.
“Jokes can be powerful, but it’s not easy to tell a good joke,” he added. “I think the reason Hennessy was so successful is that I was more into jokes than information. I was like, this has to be funny, or I might as well write an essay.”
The artist Becky Suss, who also lives in Philadelphia and has known Musson for some 20 years, emphasized that humor is central to his being. “There’s something very specific about how smart and funny Jayson is as a person and how he’s been able to make that an integral part of his art,” she said. “Not all of us do that.”
In person, Musson carries his comedy lightly, joking in the middle of the stream without worrying about how they’ll land. The humor was harder to hone for “His History of Art,” the scale of which was greater than anything he’d undertaken before: The credits included actors, puppeteers, an assistant director, a production company, and the Fabric Workshop staff, some of whom learned how to make dolls to help realize Musson’s vision.
Alec Unkovic, the museum’s interim director of exhibitions, characterized the project as answering the question, “What could Jayson do with the support and time to really explore art history and pop culture right now, with an attitude and a set of employees?” Musson spoke of it similarly, calling it “a deer-in-headlights moment” to have that much support.
The depth of the collaboration is reflected in the galleries, where after watching the videos visitors can see just how much work has gone into them, from character sketches and inspirational images shown around an early, more Oscar the Grouch-esque version of Ollie to a bulletin board with script pages, storyboards and stills. In a way, the back half of the show is a direct rebuttal to the third episode of “His History,” where Jay tells Ollie that you have to be a genius to make great art and a manic, muscular Picasso to prove it.
But that’s the way it should be: Like “Art Thoughtz,” “His History” isn’t so much about delivering a definitive critique as it is about scrambling our expectations. Is it a TV show or an art project? For adults or children? Sincere or tongue in cheek? All of the above.
“I don’t want to be an art expert because the expert has all the answers, even if they don’t,” Musson said. “I wanted to be the chimpanzee in the zoo, swinging” [expletive] around.”
Notably, “His History” also marks Musson’s return to the screen after a 10-year absence. To play Jay’s character, he grew his hair, which now has a gray streak — his “Frederick Douglass hair,” he joked, pulled in pigtails when we spoke. While his presence was the linchpin of “Art Thoughtz,” Musson actually dislikes acting and even considered turning Jay into a puppet so he didn’t have to.
“I’ve had enough with YouTube,” he said. “I like sitting in a room and sewing. I don’t like that attention.” Still, he managed to enjoy the five days of filming and offered at least one advantage of getting back in front of the camera: “Now, being older, fatter, happier and dumber, it’s good to to capture.”
Jayson Musson: His Art History
Through November 13, Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, (215) 561-8888; fabricworkshopandmuseum.org.