The painting was sold by David Geffen, founder of Geffen Records and co-founder of Dreamworks SKG, to David Martinez, managing partner of Fintech Advisory Ltd, in a private sale for a record inflation-adjusted price of $140 million. The sale was reportedly brokered by Sotheby?s auctioneer Tobias Meyer, however, Shearman & Sterling, LLP issued a press release on behalf of its client, David Martinez, to announce that contrary to recent articles in the press, Mr Martinez does not own the painting or any rights to acquire it. It is speculated that Geffen sold the painting, along with two others, to raise enough funds to bid for the Los Angeles Times. Martinez has reportedly been amassing an art collection, buying multiple modern artworks in recent years as well as a two-floor, $54.7 million dollar apartment in the south building of the Time Warner Center.

This sale would make the painting the most expensive ever sold, privately or at auction, exceeding the sale of Gustav Klimt's 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I to Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder Companies fortune, by around five million dollars. David Cook, deputy director of painting at Sotheby's Australia, stated that the price of Pollock's paintings will continually rise in value, as very few of Pollock's paintings are still left. Cook has also stated that another of Pollock's paintings, Blue Poles, is worth at least 180 million AUD and possibly even more than No. 5, 1948.

Many have questioned Martinez's motives for paying a profligate price on a painting which has little apparent meaning. Skeptics claim the painting looks like something out of an early elementary school art class.