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Richard Hamilton Swingeing London 67 (f), By Andrew Wilson

 

Christopher Hirst
Thursday 05 April 2012 16:42 BST
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Prompted by a News of the World tip-off, the drugs bust at Keith Richards's house Redlands in 1967 inspired the "Who Breaks a Butterfly on the Wheel?" editorial in The Times, the Stones's single "We Love You", and Richard Hamilton's portrait of Mick Jagger and art dealer Robert Fraser in handcuffs.

Andrew Wilson explores the event – we learn that Fraser was the only one of the accused whose sentence was upheld because, as the judge pointed out, "he came from a good family" – and the significance of "one of the defining Pop Art paintings".

If it seems like a time capsule from the Dark Ages, Wilson maintains "The confrontation between the state and the individual... is even more acute now".

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