Moving Blue Poles is never straightforward.<\/p>\n
At more than 2m high and nearly 5m long, the legendary Jackson Pollock painting has almost always been too big for wherever it needs to go.<\/p>\n
When it failed to sell at its first exhibition in New York in 1952, the canvas was removed from its stretcher and rolled up for storage. Forgotten in an unlocked stairwell for nearly a year, the painting could have been lost forever. It was only when Pollock\u2019s wife, the artist Lee Krasner, remembered it was missing that Blue Poles was retrieved and returned to his studio on Long Island.<\/p>\n
One of its early owners was the visionary art collector Ben Heller. He lived in a 10th-floor apartment near Central Park, but Blue Poles was too big for the elevator. When Heller and his family lent it for tours, a special pulley system installed on the side of the building was used to hoist the canvas in and out. It stopped traffic, literally.<\/p>\n
Bought by the Australian government for $1.4m in 1973, it travelled aboard the Australian navy ship HMAS Melbourne, encased in a bespoke protective container.<\/p>\n
Now, when Blue Poles heads more than 3,000km from Canberra to a special exhibition in Perth next year, it will be moved in a secure, and secretive, operation designed not to damage what has become one of the country\u2019s most enduring cultural and political artefacts.<\/p>\n
Blue Poles is lowered from the Heller family\u2019s 10th-floor apartment to the street below. Photograph: Heller family\/NGA<\/p>\n
Announced this week, the six-month hang in the Art Gallery of Western Australia will be the first time the abstract expressionist masterpiece has gone on show in the state and its first loan from its Canberra home in more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
With the painting\u2019s insurance value more than $500m today, the National Gallery of Australia director, Nick Mitzevich, is tightlipped about how it will be transported across the Nullarbor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t actually talk about the technical logistics, part of our security procedures,\u201d he told Guardian Australia this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the most expensive work of art we\u2019ve ever moved, but we\u2019re confident it is in very good conservation status today. It has been cared for in museum conditions for 53 years, so it\u2019s in great shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bought by the then Australian prime minister, Gough Whitlam, for the then yet-to-be built National Gallery in Canberra, Blue Poles sparked one of Australia\u2019s most enduring culture wars.<\/p>\n
James Mollison and Robert Hughes with Jackson Pollock\u2019s Blue Poles. Photograph: Pollock-Krasner Foundation. ARS\/Copyright Agency<\/p>\n
In a country where tastes still often followed Britain, many average people in the 1970s might have seen colonial-era paintings, big ticket purchases from the Italian renaissance or French impressionism, or the work of local painters such as Tom Roberts, Sidney Nolan or John Brack.<\/p>\n
But, a long way from the museums and art galleries of Manhattan, this Pollock was neither well known or understood.<\/p>\n
The newspaper that broke the news of the purchase \u2013 then a record price paid for a work by an American artist \u2013 misspelled Pollock\u2019s name on its front page, even if it recognised Blue Poles as \u201cpossibly the most important picture painted since Pablo Picasso\u2019s Guernica\u201d.<\/p>\n
Others, confounded by Pollock\u2019s \u201call over\u201d style, often described as drip painting, derided the work as a gimmick. The Crocodile Dundee actor Paul Hogan held his nose for the cameras when he saw Blue Poles for the first time, telling one reporter his four-year-old daughter could paint a better artwork. \u201cOnly a poseur and a goose could go for this,\u201d Hogan declared.<\/p>\n
Jackson Pollock at work at his studio in Long Island. Photograph: Science History Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n
Local artists were angry too. When the painting made a tour of state galleries, it was flown to Adelaide on an air force Hercules. Local reporters wrote the painting had \u201cmore bodyguards than Frank Sinatra\u201d when it was met with a street protest. Demonstrators organised by the Progressive Art Movement held placards declaring \u201cLet\u2019s Make Our Own Culture\u201d and \u201cResist Cultural Imperialism\u201d. From his vantage point inside the gallery, artist and critic Ivor Francis assessed Blue Poles as a wondrous piece of magic that could not be fully explained, just like the joy of nature or a Beethoven symphony.<\/p>\n
In the national parliament too, the controversy flared. Whitlam was accused of reckless spending by the leader of the Country party, Doug Anthony, who said he \u201ccould not comprehend\u201d how such a decision could be made. Quickly it was evident that Whitlam, elected in 1972 after nearly a generation of rule by conservative governments, would relish the fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Australian galleries were limited by the comprehension of the right honourable gentleman, they would be very bare and archaic indeed,\u201d he said, declaring Blue Poles a masterpiece.<\/p>\n
Before the painting could leave the US, some questioned whether the sale was in the American national interest. The Washington Post expressed caution. \u201cEuropeans, Asians and Latin Americans have long complained about rich Americans carting off their masterworks, but now it appears our heritage is threatened too,\u201d the paper said in an editorial.<\/p>\n
Even as critics slammed the purchase, Whitlam\u2019s supporters and some of Australia\u2019s leading creative minds defended buying the painting. The Nobel laureate Patrick White told the organiser of a letter-writing campaign, a Mrs English of the leafy inner Canberra suburb of Manuka, she was \u201cradically wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are the kind of person any creative Australian has been fighting against as long as I can remember, the aggressive philistine, often in disguise, who has held us back,\u201d he lashed.<\/p>\n
As recently as 2016, a senior conservative politician called for the painting to be sold to help pay off Australia\u2019s national debt.<\/p>\n
But Blue Poles still captivates.<\/p>\n
Its latest journey has been the subject of secret negotiations for more than five years.<\/p>\n
National Gallery of Australia senior paintings conservator David Wise inspects the paintwork of Blue Poles. Photograph: AAP<\/p>\n
Mitzevich said major construction works planned for the Canberra gallery meant the painting could travel in April. It will be shared as part of a program established to tour major works from Australia\u2019s $6bn national collection. Already works by Monet, Rothko, Warhol and Patricia Piccinini have toured the country, including visiting towns too small to have their own gallery.<\/p>\n
The Art Gallery of Western Australia director, Colin Walker, said next year\u2019s exhibition would see his institution join the ranks of MoMA, the Tate and London\u2019s Royal Academy of Arts in hosting Blue Poles.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly around 1.5% of West Australians visit the National Gallery each year, which means our community is often disadvantaged in accessing works of national significance,\u201d he said. \u201cBringing Blue Poles to Perth helps change that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wherever it moves, this late masterpiece of Pollock\u2019s makes headlines. Now, more than five decades after it arrived in Australia, Perth looks set to have its Blue Poles moment.<\/p>\n