Critics PageDecember/January 2025–26
Little Too Much is Enough For Me
Word count: 137
Paragraphs: 6
Rita Ackermann, Little Too Much is Enough For Me, 2025. Epson print of a collage assemblage, 8 × 11 inches. Courtesy Rita Ackermann.
The submitted artwork is based on a photograph I took of a cardboard collage assemblage lying on the studio floor.
To take things further, after printing this photo, I ran it through the printer again with a different image layered on top. This second overlay shows two nurse puppets made of boards and sticks, from Vivre Savie, a puppet show I presented in 1996.
To complicate the process even more—and to blur the traces of explanation—I took the final print of this multilayered image and had it 3D-scanned, sculpting it back into its original state: a three-dimensional cardboard collage lying on the floor of my studio.
In case of wonder: what is the purpose of this procedure?
“Art for art’s sake, art for people’s sake are equally absurd.
I propose art for God’s sake.”1
- Jean Cocteau, Professional Secrets: An Autobiography of Jean Cocteau, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970.
Rita Ackermann is a Hungarian-born American painter.