Masterpiece

John Frankenheimer’s ‘The Manchurian Candidate,’ a 1962 film—starring Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury—about an Army veteran brainwashed by Communists, remains the godfather of conspiracy thrillers.

Published 100 years ago, the imaginative, allusive poem portrays modernity’s crises of faith and morality.

In Luis Buñuel’s film ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,’ the director attains a state of grace and displays the courage of his convictions.

Benjamin Britten’s 1945 opera “Peter Grimes,” set among the hard lives in a fishing village, depicts the ease with which rumor, anger and fear can triumph over truth.

The Kimbell Art Museum joins classical ideals of design and a modernist sensibility, unifying them with a poetic use of light.

The Italian architect’s creation perfectly fuses picturesque surroundings with classical ideas of harmony to create a peaceful dwelling seeped in fresh air and sunlight.

His 1951 Hogarth-inspired opera, with libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, surpasses mere pastiche by giving tropes of the genre a twist.

After Duke Ellington met Elizabeth II in 1958, he was inspired to write a piece just for her, ‘The Queen’s Suite,’ a progression of sonic images of scenes, thoughts and ideas tied to nature.

Curzio Malaparte’s autobiographical novel, ‘Kaputt,’ written around the time he was the Italian correspondent in Ukraine during World War II, is a stunning indictment of fascism, created by an unrepentant fascist.

‘Still Life With Fruit and Nuts’ by Robert S. Duncanson, America’s most important black painter of the mid-19th century, can be seen as a metaphor for the U.S. itself.

The German printmaker Käthe Kollwitz’s brilliant 1904 lithograph ‘Self-Portrait en Face,’ a new joint acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art and the Neue Galerie, is a look at—and by—a woman bucking the odds.

Around the corner from the Parthenon Sculptures at the British Museum, the lesser-known frieze from the temple of Apollo at Bassae depicts Greek battles of legend in panels of breathless action.

‘Nanook of the North,’ the 1922 film, often considered the first documentary and created by Robert J. Flaherty, uses a uniquely humanistic lens to depict the life of an Inuit family in their harsh northern landscape.

In honor of the late historian, the Journal presents the Masterpiece columns he wrote for us on Trumbull’s “The Declaration of Independence,” Bingham’s “The County Election” and Saint-Gaudens’s “Farragut Monument.”

This 10th-century earthenware bowl, in the style commonly associated with Nishapur, an ancient city in what is now northeastern Iran, is a shining example of Samanid epigraphic slipware, one of the foremost achievements in Islamic art.

George Stevens’s 1956 movie based on Edna Ferber’s novel stars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean in a multigenerational tale of a Texas family as sweeping as the changes in their state and country.

When Claes Oldenburg, who died Monday, created ‘Two Cheeseburgers, With Everything (Dual Hamburgers),’ he seasoned Pop Art sculpture with a dash of Abstract Expressionism.

Peter Paul Rubens’s painting ‘The Horrors of War’ is a warning against the destruction and cruelty of mass violence that still rings true today.

It is nearly impossible to remain immune to the visceral emotions of the mourning figures in Niccolò dell’Arca’s lifesize terracotta sculptures.

Composer John Philip Sousa’s best-known piece, ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever,’ is the quintessential music for Independence Day.