Art, Twitter, and three Labour leaders

On a balmy spring Sunday morning in London yesterday, I walked from my home across three London parks to visit the Richard Hamilton show at the Serpentine Gallery.

I wondered how long it will be before someone digs up a few streets to create genuine green pedestrian corridors to allow London’s people to walk unmolested by traffic – her parks are an exhibition of their own – green, blossom strewn, pleasant lands.

Upon entering the exhibition past Margaret Thatcher playing on a TV screen above an NHS bed titled ‘treatment room’ one is very quickly struck between the eyes by ‘Shock and Awe’ – an absolutely startling full length gun slinging portrait of Tony Blair. Pistols on the hips.

It would make a terrific cover for his forthcoming memoirs. I see it comes from the artist’s own collection. It certainly ought to enter the public collection. The arresting technicoloured square portrait of Blair’s predecessor Hugh Gaitskell already belongs to us, via the Arts Council.

Hamilton pre-empts the era of photographic manipulation using the shocking images of the killing of students at Kent State University in the US during an anti Vietnam War protest; the ‘dirty’ protest in the Maze jail during the Northern Ireland troubles; and the hand cuffing of the Rolling Stones on suspected drug offences, as emblematic of the turbulent age that his art has spanned. You find yourself leaving the show wanting to see much more.

I pen this as I prepare to go north to interview Gordon Brown – not yet, so far as I know, depicted by Hamilton.

Last night, I tweeted for questions triggering a cascade of answers as vivid as the art show. Controlling the banks, sending post cards to cancer patients, vision, and the opportunity to work are interwoven with Snoopy and a persistent Twitter from a man who has lost his car keys and seems to want me to ask the prime minister where they are.

I am a one week old novice on Twitter. I confess I am intrigued by a platform I had tried very hard to eschew. But if you are a journalist and want a whiff of what people think, very quickly, it works.