First broadcast in 1972 on BBC Two, Ways of Seeing was a collaboration between the writer John Berger and the producer Mike Dibb. Across a series of four half-hour episodes, Berger talked about how we look at art, and why it matters: "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled ... The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe ... Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph ... Our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing". The programmes explored Walter Benjamin's ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction; the female nude and the male gaze; oil painting, status and ownership; advertising, art and commerce. The book published to accompany the series has never been out of print and has had a profound influence on popular understanding of art criticism and visual culture.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Ways of Seeing, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about a work of art that is important to them, and to reflect on how Ways of Seeing influenced their own ways of looking at - and thinking about - art.

In today's episode, Sinéad Gleeson writes about Yellow, a durational performance by Irish artist Amanda Coogan. "I had known about Yellow for a long time, but it took years to finally see the work - not for reasons of lockdown, or being on loan to another gallery, but because its existence relies on Coogan staging it publicly. It does not have a permanent wall in a specific corner of a gallery. So I wait, and look at two-dimensional reproductions of it online, even though Berger argues that “all reproductions more or less distort ... The lockdown online views were a mere echo of what in-person encounters with art could be. I needed to see the performance, I wanted to see that shade of yellow in person."

Sinéad Gleeson is a writer and broadcaster from Dublin. Her essays have been published by Granta, Winter Papers and Gorse, and broadcast by BBC and RTÉ. Her debut essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards.

John Berger was a storyteller, a novelist, a painter, a poet, a critic, a screenwriter, a playwright. He died in 2017, at the age of 90.

Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Show less