Much Maligned Monsters

At this point, Much Maligned Monsters is a classic text of Indian art history, and one that I found incredibly eye-opening and surprisingly funny when I came across it as an undergrad. Before Said’s Orientalism, Partha Mitter tackled the problem of how European bias shapes the perception of Asian art, drawing on numerous examples from European archives to show the stunning gaps between what an object actually is, and how a god can transform into a monster in the eye of a visitor. The book is still strikingly relevant, both to understand historical misconceptions about India, but also to grapple with the problems of intercultural communication today.