Name: Miradas I

Artist: Morris

When: 2012

Where: Mexico City, Mexico

This is a modern piece because it was created fairly recently. It has a different style to the of "regular" paintings.... instead of painting on a blank canvas, this piece is a photograph that is painted over with black paint. It is very large too, about 69"x117". The photograph is a group of men together in Mexico City except all we can see of the men is their eyes, the rest is painted over. This art takes on a new form of portraiture because underneath the paint you can see the men lined up to take the photo in sort of a cheesy christmas card way, and yet the paint changes it by making it so only the eyes are seen. It looks as though an effort to create this portrait was ruined by the paint to portray a message.

The women who presented this work to us in the museum told us that it is a picture of convicts in Mexico City. She asked us: "Do you think the paint covering everything but the eyes is supposed to make these convicts look scarier or more tame?" I immediately decided that this painting over the photograph made these men look tame. I could not tell that they were convicts by looking at this picture, I only knew this when I was told. The eyes being the only body part shown make these men look more personal. It's as if the paint covering the rest of their bodies is a cover to what they did or why they're in jail and their eyes shown are showing that despite their wicked ways they are still human and like the rest of us.

I was intrigued to see throughout the museum the different pieces and messages taken from them. It's hard to define just on message in this piece of art but one seemed to stand out to me, I think that the overall message of this piece could be that from an outside view, we don't know what's going on in the inside of others. There's always something going on with people, whether it's small or big, and yet so much of the time other people have no idea. The front we put up around others can be paralleled to the black paint over the men's bodies. In the same way these men seem more tame through only showing their eyes, we make ourselves seem more normal by only revealing parts of our lives to others. These men are not portrayed as convicts and yet they are. This shows me that the paint is covering up what's really going on and that is similar to ordinary lives. The covering of these men with black paint is the main technique the artist uses to portray this message of how we cover up what's really going on, to seem more normal.