The Virtues - Loyalty

This is a stunning laminated giclée on aluminium composite panel, hand signed and numbered by Damien Hirst on the label on the back. Loyalty is a limited edition of 1067 works.

The Virtues by Damien Hirst turn around two concepts: the spontaneous yet impermanent, represented by these cherry blossoms, reference of Pointillism, Impressionism and Action Painting, and the Bushidō's Eight Virtues as explicated by Nitobe Inazō back in 1900.

A cherry blossom is a flower of many trees of genus Prunus or Prunus subg. Cerasus. These flowers are only in bloom for a very short period every year, so they are widely associated with the ephemeral beauty concept. They are also known as Japanese cherry and Sakura.

Similarly, Loyalty as we conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis was quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I will relate of one "who could endure to follow a fall'n lord" and who thus, as Shakespeare assures, "earned a place i' the story." - "Bushidō: The Soul of Japan", Nitobe Inazō.