Nothing but a number

JOSE J. SANTOS

Alexandra Nechita’s story sounds like it was dreamt up in Tinsel

Town.

The idea of a girl in elementary school, a daughter of Romanian

immigrants, displaying artistic talent and technique that is compared

to Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro is the stuff of the silver screen.

But it actually happened.

And it’s still happening.

Nechita is 18 now and a body of her work from her professional

career, which started when she was 10 years old, is being shown at

the Wentworth Gallery in Fashion Island. The show gives a glimpse

into the mind of a child prodigy and communicates an ever-growing

truth in our culture:

Age is just a number.

SMILING CATS AND SODA POP

Looking at the Wentworth’s selection of Nechita’s works, it’s

interesting to see what the 10-year-old, then 12-year-old and

eventual teenager was painting. An unexpected juxtaposition arises

between her Picasso-esque visual presentation and what she chooses to

depict.

The viewer isn’t seeing death on battlefields or nude models

posing with sultry wantonness like Picasso’s most famous forays into

the abstract. In Nechita’s world, it’s a girl playing in the warm sun

in “Miss Maui” and a young lady carefully putting on lipstick in “In

The Land of Aphrodite.”

The mind takes a couple of beats to reconcile the “serious”

abstract technique with the sometimes not-so-serious subject matter.

It reminded me of seeing “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” for the

first time, the highly dramatic character piece infused with

high-flying martial arts and acrobatics -- two very different worlds

colliding, crashing and cohabiting.

Like Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning flick, Nechita’s art works in an

oddly refreshing way. It really is hard to fathom unless you’re

standing in front of one of her works.

Take “Untitled #6,” for instance. There are two forms wrapped in

an embrace. The figures are abstracted, with angular bodies, enlarged

eyes and extra limbs, indicative of a movement: a young man seems to

be putting his arm around a young girl, perhaps a sweetheart.

On her head, she wears a ribbon. From his hand -- or hers, it’s

abstract art -- she takes a sip from a cup of soda.

A different kind of “pop” art, indeed, but it’s just as

refreshing.

The texture and quality of the painting is astounding. Nechita is

a master with color and her ability to maintain proportion and depth

at the scale she works is impressive. Rich and vibrant, the painting

is flawlessly made.

But the exclamation point comes when you note Nechita painted

“Untitled #6” in 1999 -- when she was only 13.

Sweet little cues in the skilled-beyond-her-years work reveal a

girl at play. The appearance of smiling cats, pairs of earrings,

parked cars and golf clubs (perhaps belonging to her father) in her

work demonstrate that Nechita is growing up, and the viewer gets to

witness it unfold on her canvas.

It’s like watching a teenage boy sing about first kisses and

Friday night lights with the force and bravado of Pavarotti.

CONFRONTING THE CYNICAL

In the last four years, she’s moved from depicting wide-eyed

moments of discovery, captured in works like “Untitled #6” and

“Walking Straight, Feeling Strong,” to more mature, savvy takes on

the world like “The Wine Taster,” a painting that shows a figure

hardily chomping on a bunch of grapes with wine bottles sitting in

the background.

In the lower right-hand corner of the work, in black bold letters,

some advice is written: “If the critics love you have a drink. If not

have two.”

Nechita has had her fair share of criticism over her career,

ranging from glowing to ghastly.

It’s hard for some critics to fathom how someone so young can be

so highly rewarded for painting such seemingly derivative work. Even

if one ignores the media hype around Nechita’s technique, ignores the

“petite Picasso” moniker, and just concentrates on the work itself,

the subject matter she has chosen reveals what could be perceived as

a weakness: a relative lack of life experience to fuel her artwork.

But that’s a cynical way to judge Nechita. The real allure of her

work, the real gasp-inducer, is the brilliance of its physical being.

The canvas, the paint, the colors, the shapes and size, all the

corporeal elements are constructed with such mind-boggling

craftsmanship that one can’t dismiss her work.

Nechita is blessed with the intangible creative spark that makes

artists what they are, and she has reinforced that spark with years

of hard work.

That’s impressive at any age.

* JOSE J. SANTOS is the art director and news desk chief. He can

be reached at jose.santos@latimes.com.