W inding electric tubes pulsing with red neon light glow against a smoky black Plexiglas case in Chryssa’s The Automat of 1971, unequivocally one of the most important works within her dynamic oeuvre. Evocatively epitomizing her prodigious explorations into a daring new materiality in the 1960s, in The Automat Chryssa manifests electric light’s ability to transform human life, as it emphasizes the physicality of technology and language. One of the first artists to work with neon, Chryssa pre-dates her Minimalist peers’ ventures into the material. Often using found materials in conjunction, Chryssa created extraordinarily idiosyncratic pieces by deconstructing and reconstructing commercial neon signs, similarly anticipating the work of Pop artists.
A leading figure in the New York art scene in the mid-1950s and 60s, Chryssa was the subject of over eight solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States between 1962 and 1968. Her work was displayed at esteemed international venues including: the São Paulo Biennial (1963), the Institotuo Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires (1964), the van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1966), as well as the Seattle World’s Fair, the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago, amongst many others. Notably, in 1963 she was included in the iconic exhibition Americans 1963 at The Museum of Modern Art, alongside some of the most respected American artists of the time—among them Robert Indiana, Ad Reinhardt, Claes Oldenburg, and Lee Bontecou—establishing her place at the forefront of the contemporary art scene. However, her work was soon overshadowed by the commanding rise of the Pop, Conceptual and Minimalist art movements. Only now gaining long overdue attention, Chryssa’s recent traveling exhibition held at Dia Chelsea, New York, the Menil Collection, Houston, and Wrightwood 659, Chicago, highlights her groundbreaking endeavors into light as an artistic medium in her lifetime.
A lynchpin in the Abrams Family Collection, The Automat was acquired by Harry Abrams directly from the artist in 1972 and has remained a focal point within the collection for over fifty years. As important stewards of the art world, Harry and Bob Abrams fostered relationships with many of the artists represented in their collection, however, few rival the bond shared between Harry and Chryssa. Harry developed a close friendship with the artist, acquiring several other neon works from the 1960s in addition to the present work for his collection. A testament to their special affinity, the two regularly exchanged letters throughout the years, the subject of many being Chryssa’s latest exhibitions, writings, and works in progress. Within these letters, one finds a rapport characterized by honest reverence, deep admiration, and sincere gratitude. In each, Chryssa begins with the affectionate salutation, “My dearest Harry Abrams,” underscoring the profound esteem Abrams held in her life. She expressed her gratitude eloquently: “You are such a great friend of the Arts… many thanks for being present at difficult moments of my studio life and for your good understanding and the freedom that you inspired me to talk to you” (Chryssa in a letter to Harry Abrams, 16 April 1973). Likewise, the Abrams’ appreciation for Chryssa was evident in his dedication to elevating and immortalizing her artistic legacy within the public sphere, exemplified by his role in publishing two of her earliest and most significant monographs in 1974 and 1977, where The Automat is prominently featured on the cover.
Born in Athens in 1933, Chryssa moved to New York City in 1954 as a young painter, befriending fellow artists Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Betty Parsons. The city had a catalytic impact on the burgeoning artist’s career —enamored by the constant, effervescent glow of signs, advertisements, lights, and billboards, Chryssa became fascinated by the semiotic potential of language illustrated in these everyday objects, a sensibility that would undoubtedly catalyze the Pop art movement. Signage and language would become central to her corpus of work, as would the sense of spectacle and energy parallel to that of New York City. Inspired by the city’s pulsating lights and flashy advertisements, she took to the streets, using commercial neon signs and other industrial materials to create dazzling wall reliefs and sculptures. A pioneer in the New York art scene, Chryssa’s work broached concepts that Pop artists and Minimalists would not fully engage with for several years, while maintaining a comfortable distance that positioned her at the vanguard of the period’s avant-garde.
A sophisticated hum of color and light reverberating with conceptual rigor and extraordinary beauty, The Automat is a profound testament to Chryssa’s exceptional novelty and artistic acumen with neon. Although working in a variety of media throughout her career, Chyrssa’s works in neon established her as one of the most innovative artists at the time. Within a hazy black Plexiglas case, bright red neon capital letters ingeniously spell out the word “AUTOMAT.” However, Chryssa vertically cut each letter in two, effectively doubling each one, then aligned them horizontally along the bottom of the work, reflecting the reverse half of the lower layer directly above it in the top half. The fragmented, sliced letters represent the crux of her practice; her understanding of language and signage, pointing to both the disruptions and possibilities of words and communication. Additionally, The Automat aptly reflects her evolving obsession with technology, and what she witnessed in a city erupting with intoxicating light and signs, rapidly leaving human interaction behind in the name of progress.
“In the inner space of Chryssa’s vision there is no room for the flow of time. Past and future are joined in a constant present. The work is identified with being, existence with essence.”
The Automat was a twentieth century phenomenon, a fast food restaurant operating as a vending machine, typically without any actual wait staff, where hot meals were available in efficient and affordable communalstyle dining. A staple of the New York City dining scene in the 1950s, the Automat became “a semantic symbol, recognizable to all those with visual familiarity of New York,” and thus, the perfect subject for interrogation by the artist (Pierre Restany, Chryssa, New York, 1977, p. 78). Derived from the Greek word “automatos,” meaning self-acting, Chryssa’s use of this subject and subsequent dismantling of language and the pictorial engage the paradoxical dichotomy of technological progress and its failures, those both foreboding and glamorous. Igniting organic ambiguity, the artist places the medium—flows of artificial energy—at the center of her message.
Chryssa first introduced neon into her sculptural practice in 1962, following her first solo museum exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York the year prior. Her earliest experiments with the medium involved incorporating discarded materials such as signs, scrap metal, and advertisements into sculpted assemblages. She later worked directly with the neon itself, sometimes choosing to encase it within the protective covering of a Plexiglas box, as seen in The Automat. Pushing these tubes to both their conceptual and physical limits, Chryssa developed a proficiency with the available modern neon practices, specifically preshaping. She often worked with glassblowers and welders, who assisted her in bending the tubes of light into her desired compositions—often too difficult or dangerous for her to create on her own—predating Minimalist artists like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin who hired industrial fabricators to produce their work. However, unlike her Minimalist peers, who embraced the techniques of manufacturing, commercial materials, and industrial fabrication in order to eliminate evidence of the artist’s hand and any trace of individual expression, Chryssa approached her artwork with a personal fervor that distinguished it from her counterparts.
Growing up in Nazi-occupied Greece, Chryssa’s work reflects a profound engagement with censorship, symbolism, and the nuances of communication, as well as an emphasis on a self-aware mind, one free of automatism. During her childhood, Chryssa witnessed the underground Greek resistance scrawling coded messages on city walls as a means of covert communication. These messages, however, were quickly erased by occupying forces, revealing a constant struggle between resistance and suppression. This formative experience profoundly impacted her view of signage and communication, introducing her to the concept of the “elastic potential” of language—its power to convey meaning and defy control even in the face of erasure. Nowhere is this more visible than in the fragmented and reflected letters in The Automat, a towering manifestation of her lived experience.
Never working in series or repeating herself, Chryssa did not conform to a specific art historical group or practice. Her work defies space and time, locating classical antiquities within the modern age and seamlessly blending her experiences in New York with her Greek heritage. As Pierre Restany stated in his 1977 monograph on the artist, “In the inner space of Chryssa’s vision there is no room for the flow of time. Past and future are joined in a constant present. The work is identified with being, existence with essence” (Pierre Restany, Chryssa, New York, 1977, p. 11). Critical now more than ever in understanding the overwhelming contemporary fascination with illuminated pieces and media art, Chryssa was a pioneer of the medium. With The Automat, she achieves a novel spatiotemporal dimension with boundless cultural ramifications, her pioneering work representing the foundations for light artists to follow.
