The 1973 purchase of Jackson Pollock’s 1952 painting “Blue Poles” would have caused less controversy in Australia if Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had honored Australian National Gallery director James Mollison’s request to avoid publicizing its price. Mollison needed Whitlam’s permission to buy the Pollock because it cost AUD$1.3 million, or about a third of the museum’s annual budget. Whitlam approved it but wrote on the memo, “Buy it and disclose the price.”

From the instant the news broke, Whitlam’s opponents figuratively smashed the Abstract Expressionist canvas over the head of the Labor Party leader, and he egged them on. Conservative politicians derided both the painting and the hefty sum it cost. Whitlow skewered a representative who stated in Parliament that he “could not comprehend how the painting was made or the merits of it,” by responding that if “the selection of paintings was based on the comprehension of the Honourable Member, our galleries would be bare and archaic indeed.” Whitlam even featured “Blue Poles” on his official Christmas card for 1973. Not surprisingly, the painting came to symbolize his government. To Whitlam, it stood for modernity, boldness and newness; his critics saw irresponsibility, wasteful spending and bad art.

Lindsay Barrett, a University of Western Sydney media professor who authored “The Prime Minister’s Christmas Card: ‘Blue Poles’ and Cultural Politics in the Whitlam Era” (Power Publications, 2001), says that Whitlam could no more resist “Blue Poles” than a cat could resist catnip. “He identified with cultural elitism on any level,” Barrett says. “Though (‘Blue Poles’) was not to his personal taste, he could see that it was spectacular, that it was confrontational and that it bothered narrow-minded people, so it was for him. Probably his greatest flaw was his smartassness. He wanted to make as big a noise as possible.”

Whitlam’s government imploded in 1975, three years after he assumed power, when the conservatives, outraged by a funding scandal perpetrated by Labor ministers, demanded new elections and blocked passage of the budget to underscore their point. Whitlam refused, and the governor general, an official who could dismiss the Australian government in the event of a crisis, did just that. Some outside observers have suggested that “Blue Poles” brought Whitlam down, but Barrett denies this. “We can only say it’s typical of the excesses of his government,” he says, “and it wasn’t even his worst.”

Thirty-five years later, “Blue Poles” is considered one of Pollock’s finest canvases, and a 2006 estimate placed the painting’s worth between AUD$100 million and AUD$180 million (or $95 million–$184 million). Barrett, who asked Whitlam to help him launch his book, says the former prime minister declines to talk about “Blue Poles” and its aftermath. “When he says anything, he says, ‘I was right,’ but he says that about everything,” Barrett deadpans. “He’s the most unhumble person I’ve ever met.”