On Tuesday, September 25, 1973, prime minister Gough Whitlam declared Jackson Pollock's painting Blue Poles "a masterpiece!"
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The prime minister was not merely engaging in a spot of art criticism. He was announcing the purchase of American artist Jackson Pollock's 1952 painting for the National Gallery of Australia.
Senior Curator of International Art Lucina Ward said, "September is an incredibly important mont for Blue Poles."
That month, 45 years ago, the gallery's then director, James Mollison accompanied by the director of the New York office of the Australian Treasury, Edward Crossing and senior assistant Crown solicitor Wilfred Frey, went to New York. It had emerged the previous year Blue Poles might be for sale and, with government approval, they were there to convince art collector and dealer Ben Heller to part with the painting he had owned since 1957, when he bought it for $32,000.
A few days later Heller agreed to sell it for $1.3 million (then $US2 million). It is now estimated to be worth about $350 million.
"Whitlam said, 'Buy it and declare the price!" - despite fears this would inflate the price of future gallery acquisitions.
"Whitlam was one for bold statements," Ward said.
There was controversy in Australia about the price and the painting itself - a 1973 headline in the The Daily Mirror read '$1 MILL. AUST. MASTERPIECE. DRUNKS DID IT' - but also great interest.
Ward described Blue Poles as one of Pollock's most ambitious paintings. It is a large-scale work created over several months. Pollock worked on the canvas - more than two metres high and almost five metres wide - both while it was hung up and on the floor, using unconventional tools such as sticks and hardened brushes.
After it arrived in Australia in 1974, Blue Poles toured Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide. It was stored, along with other acquisitions, in a facility in Fyshwick until the National Gallery of Australia opened in 1982.
Since then, it has only left the gallery a few times: it was lent to the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate in London in 1998-99, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 2003-4 and the Royal Academy, London from September 24, 2016, to January 2, 2017.
It is now in the exhibition American Masters that features 150 works from the gallery's collection from the 1940s to the 1980s. Ward said this was "a fantastic opportunity to see Blue Poles in context".
American Masters is on at the National Gallery of Australia until November 11, 2018. nga.gov.au.
