What is a Masterpiece? is a 1979 non-fiction book by British historian Kenneth Clark. It is a transcribed version of the Walter Neurath memorial lectures given by Clark. The work, initially released on 1 January 1979, received a Thames & Hudson republication on 1 May 1992.

Clark's work on masterpieces emphatically supports the concept that there is such a thing as a masterpiece and that in some sense it may be objectively defined or comprehended. He opposes this to a certain form of cultural relativism that had become prominent in recent decades and may in part be attributed to the influence of postmodernism. In particular, the notion of a masterpiece was related to the balance between the particular (the fruits of the era in which the artist lived) with the universal (the grand themes raised by the human condition itself) in Clark's view.

(From Wikipedia)