Blue Poles and its $1.4m price-tag shocked the nation, but did it change us?

By Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University

Even as a high school student in the 1920s, Jackson Pollock understood the value of art and culture. The young upstart and his friends caused a “classroom scandal” when they published a polemic criticising their school’s “overemphasis on athletics” and “disrespect” of the humanities. They called it the Journal of Liberty, implying that they saw humanities and the arts as essential for realising the American ideal.

Review: Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam and the Painting that Changed Australia – Tom McIlroy…

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~	What do the Trump administration’s sanctions on the ICC mean for justice and human rights?

~	Fighting fake news: how media in Kenya and Senegal check facts

~	How to get a clean shave – tips from a skin expert

~	Novocaine: the movie action hero with a real-life syndrome that makes him immune to pain

~	How US foreign aid cuts are threatening independent media in former Soviet states

~	Ten years of A Little Life – what’s behind the enduring popularity of Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘trauma porn’ novel?

~	How to protect your eyes in the digital age – expert in eye and vision science

~	Women are south Asia’s ‘silent contributors’ – changing that could transform economies

~	How animals shape the planet in surprising ways

~	Who is Kirsty Coventry and how did she become the most powerful person in world sports?