Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, one of the world's most prolific art collectors, revealed in a recent interview that his favorite artwork is Jackson Pollock's monumental painting 'Blue Poles' - and he once made an unsuccessful multimillion-dollar offer to acquire it from Australia's National Gallery. Despite owning an extensive collection of masterpieces worth billions, Griffin admitted that the one work he truly covets remains out of his reach in Canberra.

In a July interview with Stanford Business School Insights that initially went unnoticed by art media, Griffin was asked to identify his favorite artwork from his vast collection. His response was immediate and emphatic: 'Oh god, it's Blue Poles.' The painting he referenced is Jackson Pollock's 18-foot-wide masterpiece 'Blue Poles,' originally titled 'Number 11, 1952,' named after the year of its completion. This monumental work exemplifies Pollock's revolutionary technique of flinging paint across canvases laid on the floor, a method he perfected during his most productive period.

Pollock created 'Blue Poles' at age 40, just a few years after developing his signature drip-painting technique and shortly after Hans Namuth's famous 1951 film documented the artist's dynamic painting process. The work represents one of the finest examples of Abstract Expressionism and demonstrates the physical intensity that characterized Pollock's approach to art-making. Griffin's collection already includes other Pollock works, including 'Number 17A,' which he acquired alongside Willem de Kooning's 'Interchange' in a combined deal with David Geffen reportedly worth $500 million.

The National Gallery of Australia has owned 'Blue Poles' since 1973, when the museum acquired it from New York dealer Ben Heller for approximately one million Australian dollars. At the time of purchase, neither Pollock nor Abstract Expressionism had achieved full canonical status in the art world, making the acquisition highly controversial among Australian taxpayers and politicians. Griffin recalled the historical context, noting, 'The government of Australia almost fell because of the outrage. They spent a million dollars on an American painting.'

The painting's acquisition initially sparked fierce debate about government spending on foreign art, but its value and significance have been vindicated over the decades. By 2003, the museum celebrated the painting's cultural importance by dedicating an entire exhibition to its 50th anniversary. The work has since become the crown jewel of the National Gallery's collection and a source of national pride for Australia.

Undeterred by the painting's institutional ownership, Griffin disclosed that he made a serious attempt to repatriate the work to America. He told interviewer Michael Liu that he 'once offered the Australians several hundred million dollars to get that painting back to America - with no success.' The museum declined to respond to requests for comment about Griffin's offer, but such a sum would represent one of the largest private art acquisitions in history.

In a moment of playful irony during the interview, Griffin discovered that his interviewer Liu was himself Australian. Upon learning this fact, Liu couldn't resist gloating about his home country's possession of the coveted artwork, saying, 'Yeah, it's in my home country,' before Griffin interrupted with mock frustration: 'Wait, you have that damn painting?' The exchange highlighted the good-natured rivalry between the American collector and the Australian institution over one of the most significant works of 20th-century American art.