At auction
How much did Jackson Pollock's piece "Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952" sell for at auction in 1973?
Jackson Pollock
Art market. At auction. In 1973, Blue Poles "(Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952)," was purchased by the Australian Whitlam Government for the National Gallery of Australia for US $2 million (A$1.3 million at the time of payment). At the time, this was the highest price ever paid for a modern painting. The painting is now one of the most popular exhibits in the gallery. It was a centerpiece of the Museum of Modern Art's 1998 retrospective in New York, the first time the painting had been shown in America since its purchase. In November 2006, Pollock's "No. 5, 1948" became the world's most expensive painting, when it was sold privately to an undisclosed buyer for the sum of $140,000,000. Another artist record was established in 2004, when "No. 12" (1949), a medium-sized drip painting that had been shown in the United States Pavilion at the 1950 Venice Biennale, fetched $11.7 million at Christie's, New York. In 2012, "Number 28, 1951," one of the artist’s combinations of drip and brushwork in shades of silvery gray with red, yellow and shots of blue and white, also sold at Christie's, New York, for $20.5 million—$23 million with fees—within its estimated range of $20 million to $30 million. In 2013 Pollock's "Number 19" (1948) was sold by Christies for a reported $58,363,750 during an auction that ultimately reached $495 million total sales in one night which Christies reports as a record to date as the most expensive auction of contemporary art.