"America: Painting A Nation" @ AGNSW

As pleasant as it was to while away a rainy Monday afternoon viewing paintings, this exhibition tried to cover too much ground. All of the experimentation of the 1920s-60s was never going to be adequately summarised by a dozen or so works, resulting in a final section that felt tacked on. I'd have preferred additional portraits, landscapes and slice-of-life pictures from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. These could have further illustrated the shrugging off of European influences and development of distinctively American styles. However, the cost of my ticket was repaid in full by the presence of Newell Wyeth's "Moving Camp" (1908), in which a procession of tribesfolk on horseback appears as otherworldly as the Wild Hunt. When I reached the likes of Rothko and Pollock, it was time to go back and lose myself in it again.