Hennessy Youngman and the New Art Criticism

Hennessy Youngman aka “The Pharaoh Hennessy” aka “The Pedagogic Pimp,” as he calls himself, spits various criticisms on the state of art for his YouTube channel in an urban drawl and thug-slang vernacular. Though he has “gone viral,” so to speak, Youngman is certainly not confined to art world status and celebrity. His popular video series Art Thoughtz has become something of an online sensation, amassing well over 1,350,000 viewers and 11,500 loyal subscribers. It should come as no surprise, then, that Youngman may be one of the most popular art critics in recent memory with respect to audience. Hence, a considerable shift is taking place, whereby user-generated internet media are generating alternative forms of art criticism.

Hennessy Youngman is a character invented by Brooklyn-based artist Jayson Musson, who derived the name from Henny Youngman, the English-born “one-liner” comedian, and the cognac stereotypically associated with a generation of hip-hop artists. Musson first conceived the Youngman character in 2010, during his first semester in the MFA program at the University of Pennsylvania, for the purpose of a stand-up comedy routine in the vein of Def Comedy Jam. Soon after, Musson introduced Youngman to the online participatory community of YouTube as a way to reach a wider audience. Though the Art Thoughtz series is an exercise in dramaturgy, it is also a practice based both critically and comedically in art criticism; follow Youngman’s eyes in his videos and you will see that he is reading off the page. Musson strictly adheres to art criticism’s preferred mode of discourse — writing — yet it is the activation of his writing through the performance of Youngman that makes it so radical.