The Titan painting company modernized its advertising in the 1970s and took action by making the domestic practice of painting «the easiest DIY.» This is what we heard in the voice-over of a 1972 ad: “Painting is art. To paint is to give light and color. To paint is to renew things. Paint preserves, protects and beautifies. Painting is cleaning better. It is decorating. And there is nothing as hygienic as paint. To paint is to change and rejuvenate the old, which is transformed into the new.” In 1974 Lola Flores starred in a television campaign with the slogan «painting is easy and fun», which would later be continued by Arturo Fernández, Mari Carmen y sus Muñecos or Los Roper, Mildred and George.
In the early eighties, the painter Rafael Agredano from Seville, wrote in the first issue of the magazine Figura, that «Painting lacks cabaret and has more of an conventual spirit, morality, transcendence and many misunderstood ethics when not false.” It was in a compelling article entitled «Titanlux and Morality» where, with meridian clarity, he demanded to restore «that simple and happy feeling» to creation: «All revolutions are over. There is nothing to invent anymore, but everything is there, happily for us, to use as we please, taking from where we want. Art is more alive than ever. Outside of the unique traditions is freedom, the personal work that allows us levels of expression and reading, without a single tradition to hinder them. ”
At the end of that same decade, Antoni Muntadas’ work «Painting is easy» (1989) is a critique (conceptual and direct) of the practice (so happy and joyful) of painting during that prodigious decade: a large format photograph (190 x 128 cm.) In which we see the life-size façade of a drugstore where the well-known Titan ad is hand-painted and labeled: “Painting is easy! Do it yourself. And here we remain.
Painting can be easy and even super easy, try it. That is why we propose the study of the works of a selection of artists born in the eighties and nineties: Bel Fullana (1985), Jan Monclús (1987), Daniel Dobarco (1988), Francesc Ruiz Abad (1990), Eloy Arribas (1991), Juan de Morenilla (1992) and Marria Pratts (1998). They could have been more, they could have been others, but those in the exhibition serve as a small overview to see how almost five decades after the announcement of Lola Flores painting is still «easy and fun.» Above all, very fun, vital and even, sometimes, very cabaret.
The problem is in knowing how to do it every day and insisting on earning a living and risking their lives with it, if perhaps pursuing happiness, day after day. The issue is to do it well in and for our time, now that — paraphrasing Agredano — it can be done without the need to invent anything new, with total freedom to take and mix whatever is wanted and as pleased, more than ever before: from the media and our popular culture to the very substance and plastic materiality, from the whole history of art and its tradition to the vibrant screens of social networks.
Chef Ferran Adrià said about good fries: they can be simple but they are never simple. In the same way the paint, in particular, serves as a sample this exhibition.