Artist Birthday: Jayson Musson

As pioneering woman artist Pat Adams (born 1928 US) once said to me, never trust an art historian who does not have a fine art background, or an artist who knows nothing about art history. Jayson Musson is an artist and art historian whose work is informed in unique ways by media and past art movements.

Artist Birthday for 17 December: Jayson Musson (born 1977 US)

Jayson Musson, Trying to find our spot off in that light, light off in that spot, 2014, mercerized cotton stretched over cotton, 182.9 x 228.6 x 4.1 cm Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, © 2025 Jayson Musson (PMA-8488)

After two years of producing his humorous YouTube video series Art Thoughtz, in which he set up for examination every aspect of the established art world, Musson began producing his series of Coogi paintings. These paintings are composed of scraps from the yuppie Coogi-brand sweaters from the 1980s. They not only call into question social issues (Coogi sweaters were worn a lot by Bill Cosby on his TV show), Musson cleverly ties these works to art historical precedents. In the case of his Coogi paintings, they are an imitation in both scale and composition of Abstract Expressionist painting.

By terming works like Trying to Find our Spot… "paintings", he is aligning these works with the elevation of fiber arts to fine art status, something that happened over the years starting in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 1800s through into the late 1900s with the African American and Women's Art Movements. Naturally, Musson is aligning his fiber works with the historical facts about his African ancestors bringing indigenous fiber arts to the US which have eventually become part of the wider cultural art picture in the US. The title Trying to find our spot in that light, light off in that spot are lyrics from a rap song. Musson may be relating such a sentiment to the efforts of African American artists since the 1960s to be more equally represented in American art museums and galleries.

Background

Art forms once considered "craft" began to be looked at as fine art starting in the early 1900s with the Bauhaus (1919-1933, Weimar, Dessau, Berlin), and the Wiener Werkstätte (1903-1932 Vienna) . The first workshop established at the Bauhaus school was textiles. Bauhaus textile artists were encouraged to explore a free range of expression, and many of the artists, like Anni Albers (1899-1994), created tapestries of abstract designs that mirrored the developments in modernist painting at the time.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the evolving Women's Art Movement focused attention on art forms traditionally considered "women's work," a major example being fiber arts. Reinvigoration of fiber arts was also spearheaded by many African American artists, who, in their quest to connect African American history to American art pointed out in their fiber works that sewing, quilting, and embroidering were skills many African Americans' ancestors brought with them from Africa.

This revolution in the perception of textiles was pioneered in the 1930s by many women who had studied under Bauhaus textile artists, particularly Anni Albers (1899-1994), who taught at Yale University after leaving Germany. The movement reinvigorated traditional types of fiber art such as wall hangings, quilts and tapestries, but also encouraged artists to explore new genres of fiber arts that transcended two-dimensional forms.

Jayson Musson is an artist who works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, fiber arts, video and performance. Born in the Bronx, NY, Musson received a BFA in photography from the University of the Arts, and an MFA in painting from the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia. He also studied (2011) at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. Musson is a provocative art historian as well as artist. Like his artworks, such projects as his YouTube Art Thoughtz (2010-2012) and His History of Art performances (ongoing) examine the various positives and negatives of aspects of the Western art world and art history through comedic performances that shine a spotlight on inequality in the art world as well as the peculiar, persistent dialogue about "high art" versus "craft".

From Musson's perspective, a solid background in art history provides him with a firm platform from which to examine troubling aspects of African American participation in, or lack of access to participation. His performance pieces always explore and analyze moral issues around art, backed up with facts from art history.

Correlation to Davis program: Davis Collections -- Recycled Art