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The first part of the television series drew on ideas from Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction arguing that through reproduction an Old Master's painting's modern context is severed from that which existed at the time of its making.

The second film discusses the female nude. Berger asserts that only twenty or thirty nudes in the European oil painting tradition depict a woman as herself rather than as a subject of male idealisation or desire.

The third programme is on the use of oil paint as a means of depicting or reflecting the status of the individuals who commissioned the work of art.

In the fourth programme, on publicity and advertising, Berger argues that colour photography has taken over the role of oil paint, though the context is reversed. An idealised potential for the viewer (via consumption) is considered a substitution for the actual reality depicted in old master portraits.