霍克尼, 女王与皇家教堂

　　Westminster Abbey is the place where almost every British monarch since 1066 has been crowned. Also known as a Royal Peculiar, it’s where royal weddings and funerals are held and where great British thinkers and writers are buried and memorialised.
　　After the untimely death of her father 66 years ago - Westminster Abbey is where a young Queen Elizabeth II was crowned - today she is Britain’s longest serving monarch.
　　To celebrate her reign the Dean of Westminster Abbey, the Very Rev Dr John Hall, has commissioned The Queen’s Window - a towering stained-glass window to be designed by Britain’s best-known artist David Hockney.
　　Bradford-born Hockney who once turned down the chance to paint the Queen because he was “very busy painting England actually” is not a natural fit for a religious setting and he took a little persuading. Eventually enthused by the commission, he came up with a hawthorn blossom inspired design.
　　“It’s a celebration for the Queen and I thought the hawthorn is the height of the English spring when it looks as though champagne has been poured over every bush”
　　Hockney has always been ‘curious’ and well known for experimenting with different subject matters and different ways of making art – painting, photography, film, printmaking, paper pools, fax machine prints, and most recently the iPhone and iPad. The film shows how fifty years of Hockney’s evolving art has him using a contemporary tool like the iPad to innovate a bold and striking design for a traditional craft that was at its height nearly a 1000 years ago.
　　Hockney has been given free rein with the design to replace one of the last plain glass windows in The Abbey - the place where the Queen was both crowned and married, and is in fact her church. A Royal Peculiar, the Abbey belongs to the monarchy and not any diocese.
　　imagine… has unique access and insight into the conception, evolution and production of The Queen’s Window - from Hockney working on the design in his California studio, the glass being mouth blown in Bavaria, then the Barley Studios in Yorkshire making the vast window - through to the installation and unveiling.
　　This is a significant new work of art by possibly one of Britain’s most influential artists in a unique setting.