The Virtues, Politeness

Damien Hirst painted this one himself, which is worth saying because for years he was better known for directing teams of assistants and for putting a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. In 2018 he shut himself away with brushes and thick tubes of oil paint and produced over a hundred cherry blossom canvases, dabbing and flicking blossoms onto bright backgrounds until the paint sat up off the surface in lumps. This picture belongs to a group of eight called The Virtues, each named after one of the values of Bushido, the samurai code: justice, courage, mercy, politeness, honesty, honour, loyalty and control. Politeness, or Rei, is this one, shown in Tokyo in 2021 alongside its seven companions.

The technique is deliberately unruly. Look at the branches and you will find they are painted quickly, almost carelessly, in dark strokes that sometimes drip. The blossoms are not delicate at all up close, just fat blobs of pink, white and lilac layered over each other, with green leaves poking through and stray spatters of paint scattered across the blue. Hirst has described the series as garish and messy and fragile, and he meant it as a compliment. Cherry blossom has always carried a double meaning in Japan, gorgeous precisely because it lasts about a week, and there is something fitting about an artist who built a career on skulls and preserved animals arriving at flowers by a different road.