Yareah Magazine

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Allen Tager is a professor of Fine Art and Art History at the International Academy of Design and Technology in Las Vegas. His book„ Art of Supersymmetry” results from his friendship with one of the most prominent contemporary scientists – the 2004 Nobel Prize laureate David Gross, who had developed the string theory of the universe as well as the theory of supersymmetry (SUSY). His discoveries in quantum physics prove Allen Tager’s longstanding supposition that the universe is not at all chaotic, but intricately structured.

Moreover, strings (one-dimensional lines) are no longer considered fundamental to string theory, which can be formulated in terms of multidimensional objects, the so-called D-branes. Especially interesting for him as an artist and an art teacher is the striking relationship between those objects – which can also be represented as rays – and the shades of color spectrum; he has always been fascinated by the mutual influences of art and science, as well as by the psychology of the creative process. David Gross, in his turn, is deeply interested in the visual arts, so that their many discussions formed an especially fruitful exchange of opinions.

„ Art of Supersymmetry” by Allen Tager: a short summary
Just like the seasons, ebb and flow, bird migration and uncountable other natural phenomena, light has a clear rhythmic character. The energy of light and vibration plays a part in all changes that happen in our galaxy, our solar system und on our little home planet. It influences the climate, the fauna and the flora – and of course also human beings with their sensibilities and sensitivities. New psychological reactions and mental processes are its direct result. Ray vibration is an activity in the world of causes which is finally responsible for human civilization and culture.
The macrocosm and the microcosm are symmetrically connected. Their supersymmetry is absolute, not only in general terms, but in regard to every single detail. It mirrors the unification of the lower and the upper worlds, which is what any evolution finally strives for.
This book’s argument combines a scientific psychological approach with art history. It is immediately based on contemporary discoveries. It presupposes that all things fundamentally are energy, that light is the substance of the cosmos.  As universal energy and its concrete manifestation, light and matter can be considered fundamentally equivalent. If cosmos is energy, then our ability to use and modify light is crucial. Light vibration stimulates the human mind immensely; the transformation of low into high vibration is of incomparable importance for mankind as a whole as well as for the individual mind.
The structure of any given consciousness is changed with increasing sensitivity for such vibrations; revolutionary ideas and inventions develop in science, technology, culture, politics and society. The human ability to think and to experience has been evolving improving throughout the history of mankind: this evolution and its expression in art are connected to cosmic processes.
The book is subdivided into thirteen chapters dealing with the following arts and artists: the ancient Egypt, Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, William Turner, Claude Monet, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Chiurlenis, Pavel Filonov, Marc Chagall, Kasimir Malevitch, Paul Klee  and Wassily Kandinsky. These artists and periods have been chosen not primarily because of their position in the history of art, but because they were highly sensitive for light energy.

„ Art of Supersymmetry”: excerpt
There are three perception types, with possible intersections and combinations:
1) Sensory perception is highly developed in most artists, many of which represent the involutionary wave. Sensory oriented humans try to understand the objective world by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching it. In this process, the visual aspect is most important for most people, and especially for painters. However, the characteristics represented by form, color, sound, taste etc. are merely effects of internal causes which remain unknown to the sensory subject. Such artists cannot access subjective ur-energies and have no way of establishing true identities and value systems. Among them are countless baroque and some impressionist painters: Titian, Rubens, Holbein, Caravaggio, Watteau, Renoir, Matisse and many, many others.
2) Mental cognition represents the next developmental stage. The conscious mind is able to register mental processes and to contact forms which are created by vibrations and which express certain ideas. Due to complications both in sensory perception and interpretation of forms, mental cognition distorts reality and can merely connect the subject to the lowest realms of nature. The relatively large group of mentally oriented artists consists, among others, of Michelangelo, Velasquez, Goya, Vermeer, Cezanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Dali, Miró, Magritte, Picasso, Mondriaan – and, last but not least, Kandinsky. Most surrealists and abstractionists are to be found in this category.
3) The ultimate stage of enlightenment allows for absolute vision, free of distortion. Like absolute musical hearing, the enlightened artist perceives reality not filtered through form, but “an sich”, as it is. The few truly enlightened humans represent the acme of mental evolution, be they artists or musicians, philosophers or saints. In the visual domain, enlightenment had been achieved by old Egyptian masters, Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, Rembrandt, Turner, Claude Monet, Čiurlionis, Malevich, Filonov – and Paul Klee.
To proceed analyzing these three types, we have to keep in mind the structure of thought. Ideas can be categorized as following forms of thought:

1) material objective forms in the physical everyday world
2) feelings and desires in the emotive world
3) other human beings’ thoughts
4) personal thoughts
5) ideas

[…]
Sound is the basis of matter in all its diversity. The most gifted musicians and some artists realized it, at least subconsciously, long before it was established by modern physicists. Today, music is a much more active and wider available component of most Western people’s everyday lives than ever before. This phenomenon is connected to the development of technology, but its ultimate results are far more important than a mere increase in convenience and entertainment. Some of the deeper changes have been described in Walter Benjamin’s seminal “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. What interests us in this context, is the omnipresent permeation of music.
We are exposed to high fidelity reproductions of musical harmonies, of different instruments and human voices intertwined into melodies, of sound patterns that are sometimes close to perfection. Musical rhythms become the rhythms of life, thus connecting humans to cosmic vibrations. This enables our deeper mental selves to achieve immediate contact with our surface personalities. Thanks to music and art, mankind is on the way to an era, which is freer, happier and more constructive than any period of history before. Barriers erected by personalities can be swept away by a surge of music.
Wassily Kandinsky was a synaesthet. Like Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur Rimbaud, he could literally hear colors and see sounds. It was not a matter of mere association or symbolism: synaesthesia is a physical talent which has been much studied; the only irrefutable scientific facts are as following: it is real, and it is rare. About 1% of all people are true synaesthets – their perception of sound and color (sometimes also of texture and taste) is closely interconnected. However, most of us are synaesthetic to some degree: we associate the visual with the acoustic and vice versa. This ability can be trained and developed.
Most synaesthetic artists were men of letters. Luckily for the history of art and mankind, Kandinsky happened to be a painter. He could demonstrate that the visual, chromatic aspects of sound are the crucial vehicle of its influence. His art aimed at showing the mental equivalence of sound and color. In musical terms, he was influenced e.g. by Wagner's “Lohengrin” which, he felt, pushed the limits of melody beyond standard lyricism towards a space where visual and audible art can interconnect. He saw landscapes in terms of sound and hoped that the most perceptive among the admirers of his work would be able to do the same:
“The sun melts all of Moscow down to a single spot that, like a mad tuba, starts all of the heart and all of the soul vibrating. But no, this uniformity of red is not the most beautiful hour. It is only the final chord of a symphony that takes every color to the zenith of life […] like the fortissimo of a great orchestra”
It might be trivial to say that sound equals color and that color equals sound, but it is important to notice just how true this truism is. Sound permeates all forms, just as light does. […] To turn to the latter: all objects in the macrocosm interact via chemical signals that carry concrete information, just the way it happens in every single microcosm. Countless suns contact each other by emitting intense light. The bursts of sun activity as well as all other changes in cosmic objects observed by physicists are the universal means of communication. The language of the universe is light, the language of the art both light and sound.

See more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/5257971/The-Saatchi-Art-Prize-for-Schools.html