Holiday books: Art

What Makes a Masterpiece: Artists, Writers and Curators on the World's Greatest Works of Art, edited by Christopher Dell (Thames & Hudson; 304 pages; $45). An absorbing collection of short essays celebrating favorite artworks across world culture by writers including Philip Pullman, Germaine Greer and Marina Warner, and artists such as Avigdor Arikha, Anthony Caro and Tom Phillips.

Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd, by Marianne Stockebrand, with contributions by Rudi Fuchs, Richard Shiff and others (Chinati Foundation/Yale; 327 pages; $65). In 1986, the Chinati Foundation, a 340-acre complex in Marfa, Texas, opened to the public, fixing the architectural, curatorial and creative vision of Judd as few sites anywhere have done for an artist. More than a complete history of Judd's Chinati still-evolving project, the book also offers the most lavish and complete available one-volume record of his work.

New Realisms: 1957-1962: Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle, edited by Julia Robinson (MIT Press; 294 pages; $44.95). Readers who wonder whether modern artists completely lost their minds after World War II may find much to support this suspicion in this survey of an understudied moment of cross-fertilization between Europe and America around the turn of the 1960s.

Dieter Roth and Björn Roth: Work Tables and Tischmatten, edited by Barry Rosen (Yale; 238 pages; $45). The late German artist Dieter Roth worked in every medium from paint and video to cheese and chocolate, so it comes as little surprise that he preserved as drawings the cardboard sheets, covered with doodles, blots and random spills, that covered his studio tables for years. The surprise lies in the beauty and poignancy of these chance-created panels.

The Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice, by Deanna Petherbridge (Yale University Press; 521 pages; $65). The curator and practicing artist surveys the history of techniques, materials and theories of drawing in Western art, illustrating it with a dazzling selection of examples.

Sarah Pickering: Explosions, Fires and Public Order; text by Karen Irvine (Aperture; 120 pages; $40). Perhaps the most striking camerawork debut of the year; the British photographer canvassed the centers where police train for violent civil disorder and firefighters rehearse dealing with fires and explosions.

Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe; text by Boris Groys (Black Dog; 236 pages; $48). A few names included here may be familiar - Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Miroslav Balka - but Eastern Europe remains a dark continent to most people in the contemporary art world. This concise, well-illustrated survey lights it up.