In this chapter, I shall briefly review the major findings of the previous four chapters and then try to outline some of the requisite conditions, both psychological and social, within which what I have been calling the space of creativity may be enlarged. This task is a difficult one; again, it is easier to identify pathologies than health, and easier to suggest what ought to be, in the best of worlds, than what can be, in the one in which we happen to live. I am nevertheless convinced that the attempt to bring to light the various pathologies we have encountered will be of service both in expanding our own consciousness of the dynamics of contemporary artistic activity and in imagining how things might change for the better.

Two points of qualification are in order before beginning. The first is that although we are able to identify what might arguably be deemed necessary conditions of artistic creativity, at least for a significant portion of the community of visual artists, we are not on that account able to offer sufficient ones. Because we will try to remain as close as possible to the information at hand in the course of working reconstructively from negative to positive conditions of artistic creativity, we shall only be able to speak of the latter as they are implicated in the former. Other groups of artists, from other art schools in other parts of the country (not to mention the world), may have encountered different problems than the ones articulated here, problems that might lead to a different picture altogether.