Blue Poles
Encyclopedia
Blue Poles is an abstract painting from 1952 by the American artist Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

, more properly known as Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, and is considered to be Pollock's most important painting. It is owned by the National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

 in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

.

National Gallery of Australia purchase

In 1973, the Australian Government purchased the work for the National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

, 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
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...

 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 many who considered abstract art in general a worthless investment. In the conservative climate of the time, the purchase created a political and media scandal.

The painting became one of the most popular exhibits in the gallery and was thought to be worth over $AUD40 million in 2003. It was a centrepiece of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

's 1999 retrospective in New York, the first time the painting had returned to America since its purchase.

Most significantly, for Australians, its 1973 purchase is still frequently cited by the Labor Party faithful as proof of the wisdom of Gough Whitlam. Estimates of the painting's value vary widely, often neglecting factors such as inflation and other conventional forms of investment. However, the painting's increased value has still shown it to have been a worthwhile purchase by financial standards; and there has been a subsequent decline in Australian scepticism about the value of art.

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