| Perhaps it's not quite analogous to music theory, but what you're describing in the first paragraph would be referred to as the formal elements of art or simply the elements of art. Analysis of these elements (form, line, space, color, and texture) is usually a part of the sort of art criticism you'd find in academic studio art, art history, or even just the New York Times art section. The visual design field has a similar, extended set of elements for describing the formal elements of a design piece. In both art and design, works are usually considered effective if they use the formal elements of art/design to support what you refer to as the semantics of the subject. That's a broad generalization, but you see it in practice a lot, so it seems like a fair thing to say. Academic art history is starting to feel the influence of machine learning and computer vision precisely because computers can be trained to recognize the formal elements of art and associate their use with movements and historical periods. There are way more detailed articles than this one, but this will get you started if you're interested in this sort of thing: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537366/the-machine-vision... |
http://www.dict.cc/?s=gestalt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology