Swiss Alps

Caspar Wolf
The Lauteraar Glacier, 1776

Currently reading: The Architecture of Happiness
Alain de Botton is one of my favorite author. (Previously blogged about his other book Status Anxiety)
The title explains the purpose for the reader
Architecture has never been more simple
The philosophy of it has a connection between our identities and our locations.
I guess that's what makes this book enjoyable and somewhat life changing.

In the section of Ideals of Home #5
explains a painting by a Swiss artist Caspar Wolf.
He painted a picture of a group of climbers resting in front of the Lauteraar glacier high in Switzerland's Bernese Alps.

"The painting is a case study in how differing psychological imbalances may result in contrasting notions of beauty."

The aristocrats placed on top of the mountain imagine to be on top and over those who are not worthy to them. They are the ones called 'tourist attracted to the beauty of nature' because they are overwhelmed by their over-civilised lives at home.

The mountain guilds placed on the bottom of the mountain find beauty in the lowlands, in meadows and chalets, because being on top is a fearsome place where 'one would sanely ascend only out of necessity, to rescue an animal or to build a snow varrier to break the fury of avalanches.' The necessity of their living is simple yet adventurous.

"But at this moment, at the top of a mountain, two assessments of beauty lie side by side, their divergence explained by two different, and differently deficient, ways of life."

Thank you Alan de Botton and Caspar Wolf for making me feel comfortable about living.