Putting aside for now the question, But is it art? Holding off on the debate, Is she a true prodigy? Sidestepping for a moment, Is she being exploited? And focusing only on the incontrovertible, we can say with certainty: 10-year-old Alexandra Nechita is beautiful, poised, articulate (she speaks in paragraphs and never says “whatever”) and talented.
She paints very large, very colorful, Picasso-y pictures that sell for up to $60,000 to stars like Little Richard. She tours the world–three trips to Paris in five months!–but still makes time to play with her brother. She spurns the baby-slut look worn by so many of her peers in favor of wholesome pleated skirts and sweatshirts. She has pierced only her ears. We can assume she brushes after every meal. If little Alexandra didn’t exist, Disney would have to invent her.
Instead, they’re negotiating with her. They’re looking for the right project for her acting debut. Producers want to buy her life for a TV movie, publishers want to print her autobiography. Galleries want to display her paintings. Everyone wants to meet her. She has done 600 interviews in the past year, 30 in a single day. She has her own coffee table book, “Outside the Lines” (Longstreet Press). Since chatting with CBS’ Charles Osgood and making spin art with Rosie O’Donnell (whom she calls “a wonderful person”), she can’t go to Disneyland without being recognized. She’s hot-hot-hot. The Kerri Strug of the demi-art world.
Demi-art world?
Why demi-art world?
Well, Alexandra, who has been painting in her abstract style since she was 6, is not on display at the Museum of Modern Art. She’s not represented by Sotheby’s. She’s not hanging in some blue-chip gallery. She’s at Merrill Chase, which specializes in mall and hotel lobby art and calls paintings “units.” She wasn’t discovered by a little old art teacher who once held Picasso’s pencils, but rather by Ben Valenty, an agent who seems to have studied personal management with Brooke Shields’ mother.
Valenty saw Alexandra’s paintings hanging in a bookstore in her hometown of Norwalk, a working-class suburb of Los Angeles, just one short year ago. He looked at them and the Earth began to vibrate. Lights began to flash. Violins began to play. A star was seen in the East. Visions of zeros danced through his bank balance.
He asked to see the precocious child actually work to be sure she had indeed created the paintings. He watched her put paint on canvas.
An heir to greatness
“As soon as I saw, I knew that this was the way someone felt when they discovered Mozart at 5 or 6 and he was writing symphonies,” says Valenty. Alexandra, he believes, is “the real article.” A genius. The kind that only comes along once every 200 years.
Valenty made an instant decision. He had discovered the heir to Picasso, Matisse, Chagall. That rare creature, an art prodigy. Someone who could chronicle the great events of the 21st Century in oil and ink. And he would promote her to the hilt. He would give her to the world.
His game plan was simple: expose Alexandra and her art to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Which means hundreds of interviews, tours, marketing. Allowing the BBC to watch her create a painting from beginning to end. Publicity. Endless publicity.
Valenty–who, before Alexandra was on the fringe of the art world, in 1994 agreed, as part of a settlement with the FTC, not to telemarket movie posters as investments–defends his decision. “What you see as publicity is what I see as a willingness to share this rare gift. It would be criminal not to do so. I take a terrible beating from some of the art insiders. I have the audacity of wanting to bring an artist to the world in a fairly prolific way.”
(How prolific? Alexandra has been known to turn out a painting a day. Sometimes it’s one every three days. “We’ve been careful with her,” says Valenty. “I tell her, `If you want to go two weeks where you don’t pick up a paintbrush, so be it. If you want to paint nine in one day, that’s OK too.’ “)
A cause beyond celeb?
Valenty says he finds the snobbery of the art world “laughable. I don’t understand the value to the world of keeping an artist tucked away in a loft in Soho, where maybe 500 people a year would see her. I often think, What would the world think of me if I went that route with Alexandra and deprived millions of people of getting to know her and enjoy her and cracking a smile in this world of murder and mayhem? The answer to me is clear. I would be doing the world a great disservice.”
Instead, he believes he has rejuvenated the art world after its post-’80s slump. “In the ’80s, you had people paying $70 (million) and $80 million for paintings. The market had to break and it did. It went into a long slump. It’s only now emerging and largely, in part, due to Alexandra, who is one of the most famous artists in the world. I see clients come in to buy her work and the approach is so different. Usually people who come in to a gallery play it cool, detached. They’re reserved. Here, they come in and it’s a celebration.”
There are some of those art insiders who think Valenty is doing Alexandra a great disservice. She has a contract with him, giving him 70 percent of sales, as opposed to the typical 50-50 deal most artists have with their dealers. He says it is “extraordinarily fair. One year ago, when I met her, she was not wealthy. Her family lived very humbly, struggling from paycheck to paycheck. Now, one year later, she has seven figures tucked away.
“I think if I would have said to any artist in the world, `Look, I’ll give you a 70-30 deal, but in a year, you’ll have seven figures,’ I think I could have signed any artist with that deal. If I would have said I would make them the most famous artist in the world in a year with that deal, I could have signed them. She is clearly one of the most famous artists in the world and one of the most familiar faces. She can’t go anywhere without being recognized. She’s done OK.”
Just a typical girl
Alexandra is an extremely polite child. You can tell because she shows minimal boredom, and absolutely no eye-rolling, as she tells her story for the 601st time. She is just a typical girl who does cartwheels and reads “Goosebumps” as well as biographies of Picasso. She was born in Romania on Aug. 27, 1985, and came to this country just after her first birthday. She made her first paintings on the computer paper her parents brought home from work. They took away her coloring books because they thought she was getting too introverted, so she made her own.
She was working in oils by the time she was 6, drawing women with two faces and four eyes, trees with fingers and toes for branches, mixing her paints in baby food jars. Her inspiration comes from everything, her baby brother, places she visits, things that happen in the news. She started to take art lessons, but her teacher told her to stop, fearing she would lose her style. Her classmates laughed because she didn’t draw “the stick figures, lollipop trees and rainbows” popular with the kindergarten set. “But that was not the right thing for me,” she says. At first, the teasing hurt.
“As I got older, I learned about being different and I decided what was right for me. Then I felt much more comfortable.” She didn’t see Picasso’s works until she was 8 and had already had an exhibit of her own work. “I remember how happy I was. It was a big encouragement to know that someone was painting in a similar style and people appreciated him.”
Today, she paints for hours a day, all day on the weekends, in her “magic slippers” and an apron, while listening to classical music. She stands on a stool to reach the top of her 6-foot-high canvases.
She is committed to continuing with her art, whatever the response of the public. Burnout does not worry her. “My work might change and people might not like it as much as they do now, but I’ll still do it.”
She has no intention of creating realistic pictures, ever. In fact, she says, “if I tried, I could do it, but it would be the worst thing I could do in my life. It’s like if someone would make you eat peas and you hate peas. I love junk food. I hate vegetables.”
She is very much enjoying the path her life is taking. The trips, the fame. TV doesn’t intimidate her. She says she doesn’t get nervous. “There’s no reason to get nervous just because millions of people are watching you. It’s something natural for me. Like painting. I could do 100 TV shows.” She enjoys the crowds that come to see her work. Before a recent book signing, they were lined up around the block.
“It was amazing.”
