Blue Poles

Blue Poles (original title: Number 11, 1952) is an abstract painting from 1952 by the American artist Jackson Pollock, considered to be his most important painting. It is owned by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. In 1973, the Australian Government had purchased the work for the National Gallery of Australia, then called the Australian National Gallery. Its controversial purchase, at the time, for US$2 million ($AUD1.3 million). by the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam elicited an amount of public debate, firstly over the painting's value - (this was a world record for a contemporary American painting), secondly questioning the financial aptitudes of the then Labor Party, and finally a novel debate between art-lovers and...