Howdy!

Michel Hellman is one of two Visual Art Critics for Le Devoir. Most newspapers don't even have one on staff - I think this reflects very favorably on Le Devoir, unfortunately they don't subscribe to the idea that articles about Visual Art should be available to everybody, so being able to read everything that M. Hellman writes for them while on line is sketchy at best.

I first met him when he walked into the gallery to introduce himself, I had just written a response to his review of the Dominique Blain exhibit at the Musee d'Art Contemporain, I gave him a copy and we were off to the races. Last week I asked him if I could interview him for the blog, and he graciously said "yes." What follows is the interview:

Chris: How did you end up being the art critic for Le Devoir?

Michel: Luck, persistence, Bernard Lamarche was looking for someone to replace him while he was curating his show in Quebec City. He was interviewing my brother, who is musician, and they ended up talking about that and my brother mentioned that I was doing a masters in art history in Canadian art and that I knew about the Montreal art scene so Bernard asked me to send in my CV and some sample articles which I did. I ended up calling them to see if they had read my articles and finally they decided to take me on a trial basis and hired me for 6 months.

Chris: How long was the try out period?

Michel: It was one article; they accepted it and I took the position full time for 6 months.

Chris: Do you know if there were other people involved in the process?

Michel: I didn't ask, but I think there were, yeah cause it took a long time between when I heard about the opening and actually getting a response.

Chris: From what you expected to now, how do you see it?

Michel: it's a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Chris: How so?

Michel: Well you know it is one thing to look at shows while being interested in art and just going browsing through the galleries and another thing actually having to find enough material to write a coherent article in a certain amount of words.

Chris: What sort of material do you find difficult to get?

Michel: Just knowing what the artist is trying to say, while at the same time trying to make it interesting for whoever is reading the paper.

Chris: Do you have this specific idea in your mind of a generic Le Devoir reader?