The idea of founding a theory of painting after the model of music theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

, was famously suggested by Goethe in 1807, and gained much regard among the avant-garde artists of 1920s, the Weimar culture

Weimar culture

Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic...

 period, like Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

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From Goethe to Klee

Goethe famously said in 1807 that painting "lacks any established, accepted theory as exists in music". Kandinsky, in 1911, reprised Goethe, agreeing that painting needed a solid foundational theory, and such theory should be patterned after the model of music theory, and adding that there is a deep relationship between all the arts, not only between music and painting.

The comparison of painting with music gained much regard among the avant-garde artists of 1920s, the Weimar culture

Weimar culture

Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic...

 period, like Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

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Structural semantic rhetoric

The Belgian semioticians known under the name Groupe µ

Groupe µ

Groupe µ is the collective pseudonym under which a group of Belgian 20th-century semioticians wrote a series of books, presenting an exposition of modern semiotics....

, developed a method of painting research called structural semantic rhetoric; the aim of this method is to determine the stylistic and aesthetic features of any painting by means of the rhetorical operations

Rhetorical operations

Since classical rhetoric, the four fundamental rhetorical operations, which still today serve to encompass the various figures of speech, have been: addition , omission , permutation and transposition...

of addition, omission, permutation and transposition.