This is how Bellas Artes was made, the series that invented a museum from scratch

Charlotte Davies Madrid

Madrid

Updated Sunday, April 7, 2024-01:09

"It's bad with desire

. "

Not exactly the words an artist would like to hear come out of a museum director's mouth about his work. But if Antonio Dumas is the one who cuts the cod, then let him get used to it...

This is how the making of

Bellas

Artes

begins

, the new original

Movistar Plus+

series made by Gloriamundi and Historias Particulares that premieres next Thursday and that aims to "take a look at everyday life in a museum of modern and contemporary art with everything that it means".

Antonio Dumas, played by

Oscar Martínez

, a prestigious and conceited art historian and cultural manager, is appointed director of an important contemporary art museum in Madrid, after emerging victorious in a competition for the position. However, once he has assumed his new position, he must face, in the midst of the unusual fauna of the art world, a range of disparate conflicts: from union problems and political pressures, to crazy situations in relation to exhibitions and artists.

The fiction, which consists of six 30-minute chapters, is a kind of dramatic comedy that

shows a stark reflection of society

and allows us to reflect on the contradictions of today's world through the management of a contemporary art museum: the MIDAM. (Ibero-American Museum of Modern Art).

"A modern art museum may seem boring or ceremonious, but in reality very fun things happen behind it and the series is a window to all that," explains Gastón Duprat, the creator and

showrunner

. But, "even though it is fiction, it has a foundation deeply rooted in reality," adds his brother Andrés, creator, screenwriter and current director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in his native Buenos Aires.

And to bring reality to fiction, the team behind

Bellas Artes

faced the need - and the great challenge -

of inventing a museum from scratch

to house the production.

"The greatest challenge of

Fine Arts

is the construction of the museum and not the empirical construction of designing and assembling it, but of creating a museum that is real, even if it exists only in the series, that has all the elements and artistic complexity that a museum has. "says director Martín Bustos. But that doesn't mean that the crew and cast only worked on a single

set

. "

We made a kind of

Frankenstein

, between two large structures

, between two locations, where the exterior part is the El Escorial building and the interior part is another of these large exhibition centers that is in Ávila," continues Andrés Duprat.

To make these locations look alike, Alain Bainée, the production designer, came up with an idea: "Find an architectural element and design that would resonate in all the buildings where we were going to shoot." It is called

"the double skin"

, which in this case was a red coral structure. "This way we can meet again in different buildings that

the

building allows us to do," he explains.

This is where cinema comes into play, but in a very organic way. "The actor will leave his offices, he will enter the permanent room, he will go outside, he will pass through the lobby, and really, in that montage, he will have passed through three or four different buildings, and the viewer will only see one," details Bainée.

The last step was to dress the museum

, which required many works to occupy the spaces. "The MIDAM is populated with real works, some built especially for the series with real artistic entity," reveals Bustos. To select them, there was only one person in mind: Andrés Duprat himself.

"We decided to pay tribute to some artists that we greatly admire. They made replicas of them with the authorization of each author," such as Graciela Sacco and Agustí Puig, says her brother Gastón. Not all of them, however, are authentic works of art... "In addition to all this, we have completed all of this from the Art Department with works manufactured by us", among them, a mountain of coals...

"It's an ironic look" at life in a museum, says Martínez. "

It can make you as a viewer go from laughter to a grimace of stupor

. The series explores a situation that has to do with comedy, but also drama. It is an author's brand that has to do with a certain discomfort."

In addition to Martínez, the cast includes

Aixa Villagrán

, Koldo Olabarri, Ana Wagener,

Dani Rovira

, Ángela Molina,

José Sacristán

, Adelfa Calvo, Ludwika Paleta, Jorge López, Miguel Garcés and Nicolás Rodicio. The series, as confirmed at its presentation event in Madrid this week,

will have a second season

, which is currently in the post-production phase.