Although he opted for music as his career, Schuller had a youthful passion and talent for art and drew nearly 1,000 pictures. This, his most famous musical work, is one of many representing paintings or photographs in music. Except for the fifth movement, it is entirely in the 12-tone system, being one of the most crowd-pleasing of all works in this technique.

The career of the Swiss artist Paul Klee was the reverse of Schuller's: he was a musically talented boy who chose art. A sense of music is nearly always present in his pictures, which repeat patterns and balance complementary colors in ways that seem related to principals of musical composition. The first, second, and seventh of the paintings Schuller depicts have musical titles. Schuller directly translates the pictorial composition (such as design, shape, and succession of colors) into musical processes. For instance, the 150 little squares in Antique Harmonies progress from one predominant color to another as Klee devises the composition of the painting to draw the eye across the picture and thus give it a time dimension; Schuller makes a similar phasing of one tone color to another by gradual steps.

The other four movements are mood portraits of the paintings. The cheeky "Little Blue Devil" comes on-stage with a kind of 12-tone blues harmony in orchestral jazz. The "Twittering Machine" twitters. Its spring runs down, is rewound, and it twitters some more. "Arab Village" is an aerial view. From a distance, flute and drum are heard, then a nasal dance tune in the mixed colors of oboe, harp, and viola. Actual Arab melodies are quoted, the only non-12-tone music in the suite. "An Eerie [Unheimlich] Moment" is tense, with an explosive release, sinking back into silence.

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