Uugh. Wedding gifts. They can be as mindless and arbitrary as throwing a dart at someone’s registry. Oh, look, honey, another self-watering plant. Great! Put it in the basement with the rest of the crap. What to get someone for their wedding? I faced this very dilemma when I found out my nephew was getting married.
Of course, every new couple needs all manner of ‘life things’. Blenders, plates, sheets, silverware, glasses, napkins, noise-canceling headphones. Necessities. Stuff. The flotsam of life. Now, to be fair, in order to pick out a meaningful gift, one does need to know one’s audience. I mean for some a self-watering plant might be exactly what fits the bill. But my nephew and his wife are artists. She works in clay, he paints, and among his many other talents, cultivates bonsai trees. I found myself progressively drawn to a gift idea so elusive, so ill-defined, I wasn’t exactly sure what it should be. The feeling I had was that I was searching for something, not so much a coffee maker as it was a mind stimulator. One that quickens the heart. One that speaks to the delights and challenges of marriage.
Uncle Scott gifts the most boring stuff. There is a method to my madness. The world is a fascinating place filled with wonders and histories, artifacts, artworks of all makes, models, and sizes, glittering clockworks, fascinating feats of brilliance and gall and genius, all of it born from nothing and made carnate through blood, sweat and tears. You know, 90% perspiration, 10% inspiration, and all that.
My hope is my gifts feed that wonder in us. As an uncle, stepfather, son, brother, friend, husband, I believe it is my duty to set the sails for these storied lands. Anyway, the bottom line is, I was in a quandary about what to get my nephew and wasn’t making any headway. I realized I needed to be patient. Let Lady Fortuna do her bidding.
Following the wedding, my wife and I traveled to Barcelona. There, I had the opportunity to tour the Fundació Joan Miró (https://www.fmirobcn.org/en/). That’s when I encountered the work of Surrealist painter, sculptor, and ceramicist Joan Miró (1893-1983). At the time, I was not a fan of the Surrealist movement. I mean, on its surface, it’s just a bunch of scribbles. Doodles. Maybe a bit of poop or pubic hair thrown in for shock value. Then l found myself alone in a room facing one of MIró’s huge triptychs, ‘Hope of the Condemned Man.’ Shown below.
Sitting in this room, surrounded by this work, something unexpected stirred inside me. I was actually moved by the piece. It’s like a spiritual thing that can’t be transmitted through a photo. Something positive and happy quickens inside of you.
Standing in front of these canvases, some of them filling entire rooms, I was struck by their boldness. How did these seemingly simplistic paintings stimulate so much excitement and respect? Miró kicked open the doors to a whole new way of seeing the world. He saw things with an almost childlike quality filled with spontaneity, chance, and play. Isn’t that how life and marriage should be approached?
So. Now I’m thinking: Miró. What am I really saying by gifting Miró to my nephew? Then I read one of the signs on the wall — a line from André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism — and it began to work in my mind like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Breton believed that dream and reality, though seemingly opposed, could be resolved into a “surreality.” Hold the phone. Isn’t that, in its own way, what marriage asks of us? To hold both the dream and the reality together, to weave the contradictions into something whole?
Well, I love that message. Especially, as I stand there considering if something in the gift shop might be a good fit as a wedding gift. For sure, marriage can be surreal–the combining of dream and reality into a super reality. So, what am I considering here? Should I grab a Miró print? Should I get a coffee table book about Surrealism? What’s my message in all that? I mean, without some sort of explanation, a gift like that would be almost as esoteric as this article. A print or poster might be fine, but photographic reproductions of Miró’s work in books don’t hold up well. It’s like trying to take a photo of the moon. The proportions go all wonky when driven through the lens of a camera as opposed to directly through the eye.
Alas, I left the Fundació empty-handed. No wedding gift for my nephew. However, I had, purely by accident, kindled something in my heart I knew had taken me one step closer to that elusive goal. My little white ball of desire was still bouncing across Lady Fotuna’s wheel of chance. The answer remained out there.
Some time after we returned home from Spain, we were off again, this time to Tokyo. Woah. Japan. What is it we “gaijin” say about Japan? You could visit it a thousand thousand times and still not fully grasp it? Japan is a lot, and I’ve only been there once. Bullet trains. Hiroshima, whiskey tastings, tea ceremonies, beds without legs, chairs without legs, tours of palaces where you’re encouraged and expected to wear kimono, Ramen to die for, Hachiko, gardens, temples, silence on the subway, it’s a lot to take in.
However, Lady Fortuna’s wheel of chance again clicked. It happened when I signed up for and took a private tour of the Tokyo National Museum (https://www.tnm.jp/). I had booked the tour through a company called Context Travel (https://www.contexttravel.com/). Context Travel takes the concept of a “guided tour” to a whole new level by raising the professional expertise of their tour guides beyond what you will typically get with Viator. In my case, the person who was assigned to me was a local architect. What a gift to be able to spend most of the day with this guy.
It was then, I was introduced to the woodblock prints of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797—1858). Now, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a Hiroshige and didn’t realize it. Most likely in those Japanese wave illustrations on postcards.
What made Hiroshige such a success wasn’t just his technical mastery, woodblock prints require extreme precision as every color has to be printed from a separate carved block. Think of the fine carving required to mimic the hazy vignette of a skyline.
Hiroshige’s success also came as a result of his choice of subject matter. For instance, in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–59), (the cover of my copy is pictured to the right), he creates depictions of everyday travel, weather, and seasonal changes. It’s said that something like 40% of the locations he depicted had never been represented visually in painting, prints, or illustrations — they were only known through literary works such as poems, journals, and travel guides. It’s hard for us to imagine a world without cameras. But add to it, this was the Edo Period (1603—1868), when Japan had rendered herself highly restricted to foreign contact. In short, all woodblock prints and books were subject to censorship. This meant that some places in and around Edo (what we know today as Tokyo) were not allowed to be drawn.
Though he didn’t do it consciously, Hiroshige’s timing was excellent. He was gathering snapshots of life in Japan just as the nation was transitioning from its locked-down Feudal society to a more modern state. His images became the last great flourishing of Edo’s visual culture just before modernization created a massive upheaval across Japanese culture.
Now you might be wondering how we got from Miro to Hiroshige as it relates to my wedding gift for my nephew. Here is the answer: While I was thoroughly taken with Hiroshige’s work, and Japan’s cultural history, what really struck me MOST was his influence on Western artists. Artists such as van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Whistler, and even Cassatt. His unique lens on composition, asymmetry, balance, and color entered Europe in the late 19th century, and as a result had a direct influence on the impressionists AND, as it turns out, the Surrealists.
For me Miró represents the immediate charm of joy (play, spontaneity, childhood wonder). All that can be a blessing in a marriage. Hiroshige, however, represents endurance and legacy — art that didn’t just delight in its time but seeded whole movements, inspired countless others, and still resonates today. That kind of foundation speaks to what a marriage becomes: not just childlike joy, but something that endures, something that influences generations.
When we got back from Japan, I ordered Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views. Just for myself. I had no intention that it would turn into a gift. However, when I opened the book I was blown away. The version I purchased was Taschen, another book publisher at the top of my list. The Taschen version is exquisite. This gorgeous coffee-table book is bound in heavy string. More than just a reproduction of all Hiroshige’s Edo prints, the work itself is a luscious thing to hold. It’s a treasure. As you delve into the book, you see that it contains rich commentary about the artist, those he influenced, Japan, and the depicted scenes.
I realized, in that moment, Lady Fortuna had spoken. The gift I had been searching for, all over the world it turns out, had fallen into my lap, off the back of an Amazon truck. Who’d a thunk it? It was this journey I first outlined in the letter I wrote him. The same letter, which I adapted into this post.
In the end, selecting for someone the best gift, obviously, comes down to knowing your audience. My tendency in all cases is to “feed the good wolf,” as it were. In this case, Hiroshige won out over Miró because the message Hiroshige conveys is a look towards lineage, foundation, plus a sense of lasting influence–it’s art as metaphor, what it means to experience connectedness to something greater than oneself.
