Blue Poles

A dense storm of color fills this huge canvas, where ropes of cream, orange, yellow, and black paint twist and cross in every direction. Amid all that motion, eight leaning blue poles rise across the surface like the beams of a tilting frame, quietly holding the wild energy together. Jackson Pollock painted this in 1952 by spreading the canvas on the floor and working over it from all sides, pouring and dripping paint from above rather than touching it with a brush. He described the feeling as being right inside the picture, part of the action instead of standing outside it.

This was among the last major paintings Pollock made before his life fell apart, and it comes wrapped in stories. One popular tale says he and his companions had been drinking heavily the night the work began, which some point to as the source of its frantic pulse. The painting drew worldwide attention in 1973 when Australia's National Gallery paid about two million dollars for it, a sum that sparked genuine outrage back home. Decades later it stands as a prize of Abstract Expressionism, and that furious price now seems almost like a steal.