As was stated in the introduction, the aim of this work was to describe and to understand the way the social system of Israeli painting functions, the factors which participate in the determination of the artists' success and the patterns of judgment characteristic of this system. In addition to being a study of one particular case, this work was intended to provide a basis of a more general theoretical framework for the sociology of artistic careers and mechanisms of taste-formation, and, perhaps, some insights for the sociology of culture in general.

The findings show that it is possible to classify painters according to a number of profiles of success, with a distinctive career route corresponding to every profile (see chapter 3). In this classification there were several important dimensions: the advancement in the framework of the private market by means of commercial galleries versus the advancement in the framework of the public art institutions, namely, museums; self-employment and earning a livelihood mainly by selling paintings versus having an employee status and living on a salary received from some public institution for holding an office in one or another way related to art; the high probability of being chosen to represent Israeli art in international exhibitions versus lack of such probability or low probability; intense exhibition activity versus less intense one (relative frequency of exhibitions); the relative preference of collective shows over one-man shows versus the opposite preference; the sequence of types of exhibitions: collective shows preceding one-man shows, local exhibitions preceding exhibitions abroad, exhibitions abroad preceding other exhibitions versus different sequence; the orientation toward foreign public versus orientation toward Israel; short route to success versus a long one; and last but not least, the exposure to criticism in the press, and through it, to a wider public versus the lack of press coverage.