In his new book What Time Is It? Poet and artist Franck Leibovici takes us on a journey through six centuries of Western painting history by following a simple premise (you guessed it): what time is it?' The result is an ingenious, alternative history of art as a record of time.
Relying on everyday knowledge, ancestral gestures and tools accessible to all (Google street view, suncalc.org) as well as osint (open source intelligence), Leibovici radically expands the metadata of iconic paintings by Breughel, De Chirico, Holbein, Lorrain, Manet, Monet, Renoir and more, offering us a refreshing approach to the history of art. Along the way, many small and unusual details, such as the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary a little too early, or the beginning of the moving image in painting, are revealed. Thanks to this book, we can finally know when exactly Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, Zeus abducted Europa or the emperor Titus conquered Jerusalem. Reproductions of each work discussed are accompanied by diagrammatic analyses of the painting.