Damien Hirst, H9-7 Loyalty, 2021

Laminated Giclée print on aluminum composite panel

47.25 x 37.75 in | 120 x 96 cm

Ed of 1067

According to Nitobe Inazō, Loyalty, one of the Eight Virtues of Bushidō, the Samurai code of ethics, was the most distinctive virtue, conceiving that the state exists before the individual. It is after this virtue that Damien Hirst named his fourth work from his ‘The Virtue’ (H9, 2021) series.

“Garish, messy and fragile”, ‘Loyalty’ captures a detail from one of Hirst’s immersive ‘Cherry Blossoms’ (2018-20) canvases. A composition, monumental in size, is scaled down to both offer an up-close view of the artist’s practice and to further play on the idea of the possibilities and limits of human perception. In ‘Loyalty’ is a recognisable section of a ‘Cherry Blossom’ canvas only partially viewed, insinuating that viewers are seeing the composition through a window or perhaps from inside the tree itself. Its composition is densely populated by tree branches set against a vibrant blue background. However, the branches are sparsely populated by thick spots rendered like a rainbow of “flashes” of painted, bubble gum-like petals, which, at times, hover in space, apparently frozen in time as they fall to the ground.

‘Loyalty’, an expressionistic image which oscillates between abstraction and figuration, conveys along the way Hirst’s perennial interest in the notions of life and death through the transient cherry blossom. However, the print appears more vital than morbid, celebrating the possibilities of vibrant, sensuous colour.