Untitled (March 26, 1962) depicts a grid of newspaper classified ads, printed in black ink onto cream-colored fabric. Each element of the grid is approximately the size of an index finger, just like actual classified ads. The image is roughly 30 inches high by 20 inches wide, also roughly the size of a newspaper folded lengthwise.he soft machine-made fabric support onto which the image is printed is moderately thick and smooth.
Unlike a traditional page of classified ads, in which every ad is slightly different, the writing in each rectangle is strangely repetitive: across each row of the grid, the same property is repeated. For example, listings for Deal, Edison, Emerson, Englewood, Essex Fells, Fort Lee, Fair Lawn, and other New Jersey towns appear over and over, the words separated by faded vertical and horizontal lines. The black ink’s irregularity creates an undulating rhythmic pattern, suggesting a sense of architecture or structure with density and receding space while also closely mimicking the flatness of the newspaper page itself.
This work is part of a series that artist Chryssa made in the early 1960s, at a time when many artists . used source material (here, The New York Times) from readily available, contemporary media. Using the actual material of the city--a newspaper--as her medium, Chryssa reminds viewers how ideas or images of a city can be projected onto abstract space; much like the real estate properties described in the words of this print.
