New Oval Art

One of the more tender moments of A Hard Day's Night has Ringo deciding that his life is too short to waste just being a drummer and leaving his "responsibilities" to go parading. Now, parading simply entailed walking around town taking still life photographs, attempting to skip stones in the city canal, and making friends with a 14-something year old boy before being arrested for unintentionally making trouble in a bar (a great scene really...).

In the spirit of Ringo's defiance to established life, I too went out parading one evening. Although I didn't make any friends or get arrested, like Ringo, I took my camera and got a few shots of the local scenery.

Pick up any travel book on Latvia and it will mention how Riga, Latvia houses the largest collection of art nouveau in the world. I had no idea what they were talking about. I figured it had something to do with new ovals. I was wrong. Art Novuvea is French for "new art." According to my all knowing, best friend Wikipedia, art nouveau is a type of decorative art that peaked around the turn of the 20th century and is "characterized by organic, especially floral and other plant-inspired motifs, as well as highly-stylized, flowing curvilinear forms" (my guess wasn't too far off).

So here are a few shots of this new oval art that everybody is talking about. If you're into eccentric Victorian era architecture, I guess this would be rather exciting. For those of us who would rather stare at a kaleidescope screen-saver while listening to Strawberry Fields Forever, it's still pretty neat.