On last Tuesday, July 1, I visited the Grace Kelly exhibit at the Hotel de Ville with my good friend Pascale. When I was a child, Grace Kelly was the epitome of beauty, talent, and, of course, grace. My only sister was five years younger than Grace Kelly and, in our neighborhood, also renowned for her beauty. My mother, a professional tailor, made clothes for my sister that were replicas of those Grace wore. In 1955, both Grace and my sister married. I was only a gangly ten-year-old, but that is when I knew that gods inhabited the earth and walked and talked with us, and I worshipped them, Grace and my sister. The creators of thisexhibition (gods themselves) have compassionately and accurately captured that time in which I was swept away to a world, that in my innocence, I thought would never end.Then there is a little something I have come to call the “Paris effect:” every time I visit Paris, she meets a longing, a desire, that I have long held, but scarcely knew I had. How was I supposed to know (from years of watching the Academy Awards on television) that I had always longed to see a real “Oscar” statuette, until, of course, in Paris, it is magically arranged for Oscar and I to finally meet at this exhibition. I would add that the exhibition is wonderfully multifaceted, as one example of many: (you must see for yourself) a table beautifully set for party shows a small video screen within each dinner plate containing a choice visual moment provided for your consumption.
If you choose to meet Grace at the Hotel de Ville, notice the stillness, the quietude, in her photographs. Only in the cinematic sequences is there any movement. There was a dignity, very feminine,in that stillness that no star of today can capture. And there was her authenticity: her face was beautiful in a way which no augmentation could improve.
Dorothy Renn
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