The Painting That Scandalized a Nation
A tangle of drip paint bought for two million dollars nearly toppled a government's reputation — and became one of the most beloved artworks in the country that once mocked it.
When Jackson Pollock finished the sprawling canvas he simply called Number 11, 1952, he had no interest in naming it. Numbers, not titles, were his preference — a refusal to let language narrow what paint alone could say. It wasn't until 1954, at a Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition, that the name Blue Poles appeared, reportedly coined by Pollock himself. Art historian Dennis Phillips later argued the title did the painting a disservice, drawing the eye to search for poles while the rest of the canvas's chaos went unseen.
The painting's first owners were Fred and Florence Olsen, who bought it directly from Pollock for $8,000 — a record sum for his work at the time. It hung quietly in their New York apartment until 1957, a year after Pollock's death, when collector Ben Heller acquired it for a reported $32,000. Heller was no casual buyer; he was a devoted patron of abstract expressionism and a friend of Pollock's, determined to see American painters win the recognition long reserved for Europeans.
For sixteen years, Blue Poles lived in the living room of Heller's tenth-floor apartment on Central Park West, shown to a steady stream of visitors and loaned to museums. The canvas was so large that when it finally left, movers from the Seven Santini Brothers had to remove the apartment's windows to lower it to the street. Heller's daughter later recalled how important it was to her father that major works like this end up in major museums — a conviction that helped set the stage for its next, far more dramatic journey.
In 1973, the National Gallery of Australia purchased Blue Poles for A$1.3 million, then about US$2 million — a world record for a contemporary American painting. The sum exceeded what director James Mollison could authorize alone, so the deal required approval from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who insisted the price be made public. That transparency lit a fuse.
The purchase triggered what art historian Patrick McCaughey called a moment when 'no picture moved and disturbed the Australian public' so intensely. Critics seized on the record price, the perceived financial recklessness of Whitlam's government, and simmering doubts about the worth of abstract art itself. In the conservative mood of the era, a splashy tangle of blue, black and aluminum paint became a full-blown political and media scandal.
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