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A return to the scale employed in 1950, Blue Poles is a striking example of Abstract Expressionism. The work is a furious explosion of intricate webs of yellow, orange, silver, white, and black, punctuated by a series of vertical poles that bear a resemblance to trees measuring 6 feet 10 7/8 inches by 15 feet 11 5/8 inches. The painting began as a collaboration between Pollock and other artists including Tony Smith and Barnett Newman, but the piece was reworked many times until the contributions of his fellow artists were completely obscured. The blue poles were added with the aid of six feet of two-by-four wood. Excessive, violent, and varied, Blue Poles carries an emotional weight that the pieces from 1950 could only suggest. Poet and art critic Frank O'Hara wrote that Blue Poles was a masterpiece embodying "the drama of American conscience, lavish, bountiful, and rigid. It contains everything within in itself, begging no quarter: a world of sentiment implied, but denied; a map of sensual freedom, fenced; a careening licentiousness, guarded by eight totems native to its origins (There Were Seven In Eight)." In 1972 the painting sold for two million dollars, the largest amount ever paid for an American painting.
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