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Sunday, July 03, 2011

The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick and The Paintings of Diane Burko

Diane Burko


Diane Burko - Volcano Series: 2001 by Discover Channel: Volcano Vacations
from Diane Burko on Vimeo.

Diane Burko
Diane and I go back a long time, since she was an MFA student at Penn. She has spent her entire career doing landscape paintings, very unusual ones. Flying over glaciers, mountains and volcanoes she has recorded our planet in a way no one else has. As it has turned out she has become a witness to the destruction of what are some of the most beautiful inaccessible landscapes on earth. The world has been willing her in this journey as it was not her intention that she would ever be documenting a lost world. We can only be grateful to her for doing this.

Diane Burko
Her images are very like those in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. So many moving in time images resonating with Burko's paintings. The film is a wonder to see as are Burko's paintings. In the film I wept in surprise for seemingly no reason at all, just the sheer beauty of moving paintings, abstract, expressionistic, and realistic all at the same time before my eyes. The music is classical, haunting and reaches somewhere you haven't been in a long time. The relief in seeing a film where the music doesn't tell you how you are supposed to be feeling. Music that is just there, simply there.

Spencer Tunick Greenpeace Installation
And then I come to the Installations of Spencer Tunick with all his naked bodies. And his Greenpeace Installation coupled with Burko's glacier paintings. Malick's The Tree of Life is not easily classified so why bother. It is an experience like a Robert Wilson opera. You are aware that you can feel yourself breathe while watching it.

Diane Burko




Diane Burko

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