“Inclusive language can serve as a distraction from talking about more complex topics”

For its creator, Andrés Duprat, the character of Dumas serves to share, with delicious irony, his discomfort with contemporary art. In the new Star+ series, “Bella Artes”, the scriptwriter opens fire against political correctness, stereotypes, the frivolity of the artistic medium or the despotism of the Ministry of Culture. Directed by Argentinians Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (the team responsible for hits like “The Manager” and “Nada”), its portrait of the high-ranking figures of contemporary art is as devastating as it is fun.

It is not for nothing that Andrés Duprat and Antonio Dumas share initials: Andrés Duprat has 30 years of experience in the cultural management of museums. Likewise, Gastón Duprat (his brother) and Mariano Cohn come from the world of video art. Thus, it is a critique of the art world from within, basically directed at the phenomenon of ‘woke’ activism that many museums suffer from today. A militancy that covers statues with paint, cancels artists and throws concoctions on historical canvases to draw attention to, for example, climate change. For Andrés Duprat, all this is part of a hypocritical political correctness to wash consciences. “It ends up being just a gesture, an empty grimace, and not a real recognition with concrete consequences,” he warns in this interview via Zoom, from his studio in Buenos Aires.

— Part of your criticism of ‘woke’ activism has to do with attacks on works by artists questioned under contemporary morality. How do you see this phenomenon?

It is obvious that public institutions like the one I direct are now more sensitive to the demands of minorities and to working with a gender vision. But it is one thing to begin to correct the errors of the past, to give rise to other views and cultures that have been ignored, than to “correct backwards.” That is, amending history with current parameters, which is now done so clumsily, which is Manichean and fascist. I think it is not about erasing the mistakes of the past, but about showing them to recognize what we were 200, 100 or 50 years ago. The problem is that in contemporary art everything is very rarefied…

— “How low the revolutionary spirit has fallen!” says your protagonist when a group of young people attack a museum sculpture. Has political activism become puritanism?

It is not about changing old dogmas for new ones, but about being as undogmatic as possible. In Argentina, for example, a debate arose a while ago about inclusive language, something we laugh about a little in the series. I agree with inclusive language, but be careful that it can also serve as a distraction from talking about more complex topics. For example, half of the children in Argentina are poor. That’s the real drama.

— Being a screenwriter allows you to shape your experience as a museum director. How much autobiographical is there in the series?

Although I am very different from the protagonist, there is a lot of autobiographical. Visiting a museum is like going to the theater: to have an experience, the visitor does not have to see the stage work. With Gaston [Duprat] and Mariano [Cohn] We liked the idea of ​​showing the museum as an artifact, where one can see the visible, its temporary exhibitions, its collections, etc., but also remove the veil that hides so many things that converge in its structure. A museum is like an ocean liner, a reproduction of society, a space of madness and creation, but also the space where unionized employees work who do not adapt to the whims of a frivolous artist or political pressures.

— In your comedy, Antonio Dumas, the museum director, always gets his way by appealing to irony. How do you build this character?

Dumas knows what his weapons are. He is a very nihilistic guy, something that is starting to happen to me: you see things and have the feeling of having already seen them, believing that the current version is worse. He finds every project that his young curator proposes frivolous or hackneyed. I like to criticize his indifference, as a mea culpa. I started directing museums at a very young age, and I realized that, although I had less experience, he was connected to contemporary times in a sensitive, not intellectual or academic, way. Later, when you grow up, you get a little stagnant, you protect yourself, you risk less.

— Meanwhile, its curator gets excited about things he creates new, like displaying a work made with excrement in a showcase, for example. Are artists condemned to invent the wheel from time to time?

I think of Piero Manzoni and his “Artist’s Shit,” which he sealed in cans in the early sixties. I believe that art milestones open great portals. Marcel Duchamp, for example, 100 years ago placed a urinal in an exhibition and claimed that it was a work. He asked that they not see it as what it was, but as an object with a texture, a shine, a shape. And he signs it on purpose, to appropriate it. Without a doubt, it is a magnificent work of art, a turning point that marks the beginning of contemporary art. However, those wonderful portals also enable an army of ‘chantas’ that ride on those platforms. I think Duchamp’s gesture endures to this day, but there is no point in doing it again. Great works divide waters, expand the universe, but at the same time they give free rein to a bunch of scammers. And yet, I like the art world as ridiculous as it is! I am more interested than the world of doctors, lawyers, dentists or mechanics. It’s fascinating and super unfair. He has no career ladder: a 20-year-old, semi-literate boy with a spectacular visual idea can overtake a great artist who has been doing the same thing for 40 years. Art is one of the few areas in this world where there can be these accesses to madness with such good results.

— Curiously, Peru has a subtle presence in the series. It is the place where the protagonist’s lost love lies…

I love Peru. We are already filming the second season, where Ángela Molina, who plays her ex-wife, will have a greater presence. The story of both is told in dribs and drabs. She is a Spaniard who went to live in the Peruvian jungle to find “the true” that she cannot find in Europe, and she continues to make her artistic work, turning her back on fashions and biennials. And he is a guy who has become institutionalized, who has settled into power.

“Great works divide waters, expand the universe, but at the same time they give free rein to a bunch of swindlers. And yet, I like the world of art with how ridiculous it is! I’m more interested in it than the world of doctors, lawyers, dentists or mechanics.”

Andres Duprat director of the National Museum of Fine Arts (Argentina).

— At the beginning of the series, you criticize the issue of “quotas” in art: the protagonist is evaluated for the position of museum director and in front of the jury he says: “I am old, I am a man, I am white of European descent and heterosexual . “I am the least risky and least conservative choice to make.”

It’s done in a comedic tone, but there’s that nonsense. We put it on purpose. I remember that for the last competition at the National Museum of Fine Arts, we were nine finalists, I was the only man. There was a transvestite and seven women. In an article in an important newspaper in Buenos Aires, the news of the nine finalists came out and it was suggested that they should include a woman, as if warning against any discrimination. And I thought that comment was stupid. People who do not want to confront each other, who do not have the character to express their opinion, hide behind dogma. Today women are gaining a lot of ground in the field of management, and that is very good. I think it’s great that a transvestite, a woman or a man, wins. But not because of being a transvestite, being a woman or being a man, but because of the project that he presents.