Inspirations
Bel Oeil takes inspiration from the experience of the great architects, artists and interior designers - here's a selection of films that inspire us!
Piero Lissoni in Tuscany
Piero Lissoni is one of the greatest Italian designers alive.
Notably, he designs for Boffi, Porro, Living Divani, Cassina, B&B Italia, Glass Italia and many others …
We see him here in his element, resting in Tuscany, in his house, which looks totally like him!
Ice Cube on Ray & Charles Eames House
A visit to the legendary house n°8 of the mythical couple Ray & Charles Eames, in the company of the no less mythical rapper Ice Cube …
Los Angeles, California … 50’s and today.
Surprising!
Axel Vervoordt, The esthetic of zen
The Belgian Axel Vervoordt is a powerful influencer of atmospheres.
His reforming vision of decoration, nourished by the fragile beauty of imperfection and the eulogy of an emptiness which liberates the energies saturated by the superfluous confines to a kind of zen dandyism.
Originally an antiques dealer, decorator and gallerist in Antwerp and Hong Kong, he rehabilitated Kanaal, a former Antwerp brewhouse where he kept the purity of industrial architecture. It highlights the works by Fontana, Anish Kapoor and El Anatsui, but also two forgotten avant-garde movements: the Japanese Gutaï and the Zero movement of his compatriot Jef Verheyen.
He approaches curation in an intuitive way, during the Biennials of Art of Venice, with Artempo, Infinitum, Tra and Proportion, his exhibitions are on esoteric themes, deployed between the sumptuously decapitated walls of the Palazzo Fortuny.
Fascinated by oriental spirituality, he is the prescriber of the Wabi Sabi, a state of mind that favors organic matter and consecrates the beauty of things impermanent, incomplete, sober, humble and therefore atypical … Its systemic decoration also makes art have a dialogue with artisans and civilizations with contemporary times.
Esthetic Vervoordt wants to raise the furniture to the rank of philosophy and disqualifies the ostentation for the benefit of a simplicity which frees the places from confusion thus denoting the beauty and purity of the objects, furniture and art.
If Vervoordt can be considered as a guru of the decoration, Bel Œil proclaims our unconditional following!
Julian Schnabel at Philip Johnson’s Glass House
The Glass House of the modernist architect Philip Johnson is a reference to which Bel Œil is very attached: simplicity, humility and functionality, spaces all in transparency, which let nature express itself according to the seasons…
Philip Johnson and his companion were great collectors.
The guided tour of the Glass House by Julian Schnabel, one of their favorite artists, is both touching and exciting since the painter and filmmaker himself is moved and sensitive to the place…
A true homage, rendered by a great contemporary artist.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Architecture as language
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe talks about architecture … Less is more!
The great German architect, a member of the Bauhaus in his time, then author of many mythical buildings in America particularly, opens his eyes to the construction, and modes of habitation … He insists on the complementarity of the visual arts, sculpture and architecture, as defined by Gropius and his followers in Dessau in the 1920s.
Bel Œil keeps in mind his series of furniture Barcelona, designed to furnish the pavilion of the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1929, and still edited by Knoll International today …