In 1973, under the Whitlam government, the director of the Australian National Gallery, James Mollison, announced that the gallery would be purchasing Jackson Pollock's Number 11, 1952 (Blue Poles), for $1.34 million, more than three times any amount paid for a twentieth century work at the time. It has been recently revalued at approximately $40 million. The public reception of this difficult 'Abstract Expressionist' painting was divided, with the popular majority dismissing the work because of its deemed lack of thematic substance and an absence of technical proficiency on behalf of the alcoholic artist. In a documentary concerning the purchase and the public response, Poles Apart, produced and directed by Judy Rymer, a casual observer, represents the popular sentiment when explaining: "I just couldn't make a story out of it"...

Toward the end of Balzac's short story, "The Hidden Masterpiece," the young artists Poussin and Porbus are finally presented with the 'masterpiece' that their mentor, Frenhofer, has been perfecting for the last ten years. Remarkably, Balzac has Poussin respond in a way that seems to foreshadow popular criticism of American Abstract Expressionism:

"The old rogue is making a game of us," said Poussin, coming close to the pretended picture. "I can see nothing here but a mass of confused color, crossed by a multitude of eccentric lines, making a sort of painted wall."

Indeed, Pollock's previous works--e.g. Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)--could be described thus. However, Blue Poles marks the apotheosis of his large 'drip' canvasses (as Pollock in fact quit the style after this painting)…

…Upon closer inspection of the Frenhofer (in Balzac), the two artists notice something breaking forth through the background. It is a foot, "an enchanting foot, a living foot", which functions in the same way as Pollock's 'blue poles' do, surging forth from a swirling, atmospheric background of confusion, leaving Poussin and Porbus, in a position which would be similar to that of the initiate of Blue Poles: '…lost in admiration before this glorious fragment breaking forth from the incredible, slow, progressive destruction around it.'

Michel Serres' reading of the Balzac story in Genesis explains that it is in fact a noisy background that allows for the presentation of any unitary event. Here he is not only referring to the Frenhofer, but to our own conceptual framework that relies on the multiple, to extricate the unitary:

In the unfathomable thickness of this foundation, in the obscurity of these multiple conditions, the elements of capacity are buried in their own sleep, awaiting their awakening to some degree of culture. This infinite base cannot be defined by lucid and rigorous rationality. It plunges into background noise, into the cloudy clamor of the confused (Serres 22).

Serres might just as well be referring to a Pollock--but, one prior to Blue Poles, such as Lavender Mist. When reading the revelation of 'the foot', on the other hand, Serres' explanation is altogether applicable to Pollock's 'hidden' masterpiece:

…Everything is founded in the possible, all representations originate in the belle noiseuse, all states come to us from chaos... There is the background noise, then a noise in the midst of that background noise, and suddenly there's the whole song. (Serres 24)

Jaya Savige