In order to explore the connection between painters' styles and their patterns of success, we must examine in detail the agents in the system, whose judgment determines success – the “gatekeepers”. It must be asked: (1) How do the “gatekeepers” work? What sorts of judgments are made and what are their grounds? (2) In what way does the behavior of the “gatekeepers” affect the artists' patterns of success?

The role of the “gatekeepers” is performed by different groups in the two systems: by gallery owners in the private market and supposedly by critics and curators in the public system.

The group of critics consists of a small number of people (approximately twenty). Most of them started their activity in the 1970s or late 1960s although among them there are critics that embarked on their career in an earlier period. As was already indicated in chapter 1, Israeli art existed at first almost without criticism. Those who wrote on the matters of art in the press were art lovers of European origin, men of general education, lacking in most cases specific training in art itself. The most important critic of plastic art until the middle of the 1950s was Dr. Haim Gamzu, a theater critic by education who later served as director of the Tel-Aviv Museum.