Elana Hagler plots examples of contemporary representational painting on an Apollonian/Dionysian continuum.

Hagler concludes: "My hope in exploring these categories [Classical, Observational, and Constructed] and the wide range of Apollonian and Dionysian traits contained in each one is to show that choices of painting style, that visual predilections and affinities, directly result from our deeply rooted response to the chaos inherent in life, and the civilizing forces which struggle to make sense of it. No art can exist without the interrelation of the conflicting tendencies of resisting or embracing the chaos."