European males were exponentially the greatest visual artists in history. According to the most objective comparison we have on the respective contributions of the world’s civilizations to the visual arts, Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences 800 BC to 1950 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), Europeans clearly stand way at the top. The crazies on the left have dismissed this book as a subjective assessment without much merit, insisting that all cultures have contributed more or less the same to culture.

But any person whose mind has not been warped by current academic trends can’t deny that Human Accomplishment is the first impressive effort to quantify “as facts” the accomplishments of individuals and countries across the world in the arts and sciences by calculating the amount of space allocated to these individuals in reference works, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. Contrary to the accusations of establishment academics, Murray recognizes that one cannot apply a uniform standard of excellence for the diverse artistic traditions of the world, and this is why he created separate compilations for each of “the giants” in the arts of the Arab world, China, India, Japan, and Europe. (He only produced combined inventories of the giants for each of the natural sciences, since world scientists themselves have come to accept the same methods and categories).

Now, although Murray did not compare artistic achievements, he noted that the sheer number of “significant figures” in the arts is higher in the West in comparison to the combined number of the other civilizations. In the visual arts, the number of significant artistic figures in the West is 479, as compared to 192 for China and Japan combined, with no significant figures listed for India and the Arab World.

I have stopped with the end of the 19th century because it is apparent that Gombrich was not too keen about the major trends of the 20th century, the Expressionists, Surrealists, Dadaists, or “modern art” generally, even less about the “abstract artists” of the post-WWII decades. Spengler anticipated this decline in the late 19th century. Understanding this decline would be a major subject of writing. The many passages cited above were meant to convey to readers that European superiority in the arts has not been only about number of great works; it has been about the incessant drive of European artists to find novel ways of painting, new ways to portray life, use colours, shadows, light, express the infinity of nature and human emotions. Europeans have reached deeper into the meaning of everything there is. It is almost as if God put them in charge of bringing about perfection. Sad to know that our current elites are now in charge of destroying this perfection for the sake of equality and diversity.