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It’s easy to dismiss Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 as a senseless splatter of paint—but even if you can’t appreciate its aesthetic, this piece of art has a history that’s worth its weight in house paint and stacks of cash. Here are 10 facts about the late artist’s masterpiece.

In the wake of World War II, New York City artists like Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning began pushing the boundaries of their paintings in a direction that would be dubbed “Abstract Expressionism” by art critic Robert Coates in 1946. This wave of modern art made New York the center of the art world, thanks in part to the movement’s embrace by esteemed collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim. Pollock’s contribution was his drip paintings, including No. 5, 1948.

Rather than working from an easel, Pollock would place his canvas on the floor and pace around it, applying paint by dripping it from hardened brushes, sticks, and basting syringes. Pollock had only begun experimenting in this form the year before No. 5, 1948’s creation, but his style soon became so signature he was dubbed “Jack the Dripper.” 

“On the floor I am more at ease,” Pollock said. “I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides, and literally be in the painting.” 

Drip painting came to seen as a form of “action painting,” a term that was coined by American art critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952. In a catalogue for a 1958 exhibition at the The Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, Rosenberg said, “Action Painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence; but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic.”

Pollock’s works were revolutionary on several levels. For centuries, artists had sketched out or test-run their large-scale paintings. But not Pollock, who was instead guided by emotion and intuition as he wove around his fiberboard base, dropping and flinging paint as his muse demanded. He abandoned brushstrokes in favor of drips and splashes, and set the art world on fire with his impromptu masterworks.

An important element of the drip method was paint with a fluid viscosity that would allow for smooth pouring. This requirement meant traditional oil paints and watercolors were out. Instead, Pollock began experimenting with synthetic gloss enamel paints that were making old-school, oil-based house paints obsolete. Though this clever innovation was praised, Pollock shrugged it off as “a natural growth out of a need.” 

On June 18, 2006, Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I sold for $135 million, making it the highest priced painting in the world. Less than five months later, No. 5, 1948 fetched $140 million. In 2011, this title was snatched by one of Paul Cézanne’s Card Players, with a price tag of $250 million. And in 2016, Salvator Mundi—which some believe was painted by Leonardo da Vinci—was purchased for $450.5 million, blowing all other contenders for world’s most expensive painting out of the water by $150 million.

No. 5, 1948 measures in at 8 feet by 4 feet. The Guardian notes that this means each square foot is worth over $4 million.

The New York Times reported entertainment tycoon David Geffen may have unloaded No. 5, 1948 in that 2006 sale, along with pieces by Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning, in an effort to pull together enough capital to purchase the established newspaper. The sale of these three paintings netted $283.5 million. Yet Geffen never did buy the LA Times, even though he tried repeatedly. Once, he even offered $2 billion. In cash.

In 1973, Pollock’s 1952 piece Blue Poles sold for $2 million. While nowhere near as expensive as No. 5, 1948, that figure was enough to make it the highest price paid for a contemporary American work at that time. Sadly, Pollock never saw either of his pieces make art history—a car accident on August 11, 1956, cut his life painfully short. 

No. 5, 1948 appears in the 2015 sci-fi film Ex Machina starring Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Alex Garland. “There was something about what Pollock was trying to do as a painter that had to do with the automatic, to try to paint in an unconscious way, that fitted in a thematic … and actually a literal way … the issues that the film was talking about,” Garland explained Set Decor magazine. “So there was a Jackson Pollock painting specified, discussed in the script as a plot point, as a theme point.” The painting is also name dropped in the song “Going Down” by the Stone Roses: “There she looks like a painting / Jackson Pollock’s No. 5 … ”

While the art critics gush and collectors lay down millions for an auctioned Pollock piece, a good portion of the public is still confounded by the artist’s output 60-plus years later. Every time one of his paintings sells for millions, articles pop up asking why. The short answer is, though his drip paintings may not be accessible, they were seminal, changing the way we think of art itself. They may not be traditionally pretty. But they are both art and art history.

A version of this story ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2023.

The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton’s 1967 coming-of-age novel, is a staple for young readers. Even if you’ve already delved into Ponyboy’s tumultuous adolescence, you can probably still learn something about the young adult classic.

Susan Eloise Hinton was only 15 when she began writing the novel and was just 18 when it was first published. Hinton felt compelled to write after she became frustrated with the lack of relatable pop culture being produced for teenagers at the time. “I’d wanted to read books that showed teenagers outside the life of ‘Mary Jane went to the prom,’” Hinton explained a 1981 interview with Seventeen. “When I couldn’t find any, I decided to write one myself. I created a world with no adult authority figures, where kids lived by their own rules.”

The tense divide between the upper class Socs (pronounced “soashes,” as in social) and the lower class “Greasers” at Hinton’s high school was so bitter that the gangs had to enter through separate doors. Although Hinton was neither a greaser nor a Soc, the book is written from the point of view of the greaser Ponyboy in an effort to humanize the gang. Hinton also refrains from vilifying the Socs, a choice that reflected her belief that things are “rough all over.”

“During that time, I did four complete drafts,” the author said. “The first draft was forty pages; then I just kept rewriting and adding details.” She got a D in her creative writing class that year because she was focused on the novel.

Hinton originally wrote The Outsiders primarily for herself, but the mother of one of her friends read a draft and thought that the book deserved a wider audience. The friend’s mother contacted an agent in New York, and soon Viking Press signed Hinton for a $1000 advance.

“Ponyboy Curtis is probably the closest I’ve ever come to putting myself in a book, even down to the physical description,” Hinton once said. “He had my ideas; he had my personality. And he and I both liked sunsets. My mother would yell, ‘Why are you taking so long to get the garbage can back in the house?’ It would be because I was standing outside watching the sun.” Different Sunsets was the original title of The Outsiders, “but I had a wonderful editor, Velma Varner, who thought that title would be too ‘soft’ for the story. I agreed. The Outsiders encompasses so many different levels. I’m glad I changed it.”

Viking suggested that Hinton use her initials instead of her full name due to concerns that readers and reviewers alike would automatically dismiss a book about teenage boys written by a teenage girl. The strategy worked, and as Hinton explained on her website, “I found I liked the privacy of having a ‘public’ name and a private one, so it has worked out fine.”

What drove Hinton to write from a male point of view in the first place? As she explained on her website, the initial choice reflected her own sensibility, but it was also strategic. “I started using male characters just because it was easiest. [I] was a tomboy, most of my close friends were boys, and I figured nobody would believe a girl would know anything about my subject matter. I have kept on using male characters because (1) boys have fewer books written for them, (2) girls will read boys’ books, boys usually won’t read girls’, and (3) it is still the easiest for me.”

Although The Outsiders would eventually become a huge success, it didn’t fly out of the gate—in fact, Hinton’s first royalty check totaled just $12 (around $31 today). “Even in those days, $12 didn’t get you more than three tanks of gas,” she recalled. The book nearly went out of print before teachers and librarians recognized how much it resonated with young readers. To date, the book has sold more than 15 million copies and been translated into more then 30 languages.

The emergence of an authentic, relatable novel helped teachers reach students who had grown bored with the use of traditional textbooks in English classes. “I remember going to American Library Association conferences and they were clamoring for something different. We realized there was a real market for books such as The Outsiders,” Hinton’s longtime friend Ron Beuhl told USA Today in 2007.

The success of The Outsiders put a lot of pressure on Hinton, and the stress initially inhibited her progress on a follow-up book. To combat this writer’s block, her then-boyfriend (and eventual husband) suggested that Hinton write just two pages a day. If she could show him that, he would take her out on a date that evening. It must have worked, because her next novel, That Was Then, This is Now, was released in 1971.

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 big screen adaptation of The Outsiders helped spark the “Brat Pack” genre of the 1980s and jumpstarted the careers of “up-and-comers” like C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, and Diane Lane. But without Hinton’s passionate fans, the director might not have found the project at all. Coppola started considering filming The Outsiders after California high school students sent him a petition nominating him as the perfect director to adapt their favorite novel.

A meeting with Hinton sealed the deal for Coppola. ‘“When I met Susie it was confirmed to me that she was not just a young people’s novelist, but a real American novelist,” the director said in a 1983 interview.

Although Hinton didn’t write the screenplay, she remained closely involved in the production by serving as a location scout and even making a small cameo as a nurse. Coppola was so taken with Hinton’s charming storytelling that during filming of The Outsiders he and Hinton collaborated on an adapted screenplay for one of her other books, Rumble Fish. In the aforementioned 1983 interview, Coppola praised the author’s involvement: “Susie was a permanent member of the company. My experience with her made me realize that the notion of having a writer on the set makes a lot of sense.’”

Controversial at the time of its publication for its frank portrayal of gang violence, delinquency, underage drinking and smoking, and strong language, the book continues to be challenged. It was ranked no. 38 on the American Library Association’s “Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of the ’90s,” and has even been banned in some schools. Thankfully, the book also has become a part of many schools’ curricula, ensuring that students will be staying gold with Ponyboy for years to come.

The novel’s climax centers on the tragic deaths of Johnny and Dally, two sympathetic Greasers caught up in the gang drama. When asked by a fan on Twitter why they had to die, Hinton showed no mercy: “Because I am a stone cold bitch,” she responded.

As she told Smithsonian.com in 2023, “I am very tired of talking about [it]. I don’t give speeches about it anymore. The thought of getting into it one more time is almost paralyzing. You’re lucky. This may be the last interview on The Outsiders I’ll ever give. … Oh god, for once, I’d like to discuss Rumble Fish.”

A version of this story was published in 2018; it has been updated for 2024.