The Joseph Burke Lecture 2009 Jason Smith Director, Heide Museum of Modern Art Dark Theatres and Erotic Intensities: some thoughts on the works of Bacon, Henson, Booth and Boynes This lecture will be a further elaboration of my long standing interest in the humanist foundation of the works of many artists with whose practices I have interacted closely during my career. In this lecture I focus on the works of Francis Bacon, Bill Henson, Peter Booth and Robert Boynes as artists who were and are sensitive barometers of their times. Their works alert us to unpredictable and sometimes dire evolutions in culture by offering us images and ideas that are alternative to the mainstream. In his 1878 treatise Human, All Too Human, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that if ‘someone doesn’t want to see something, they won’t.’ The works of Bacon, Henson,…

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