Norwegian artist Maret Anne Sara's Documenta 14 installation Pile o Sapmi is a curtain made of reindeer skulls. Credit:Jens Meyer "Art's entire mood and outlook on life will change, believe me – meaning, it will become both more cheerful and more modest. It is inevitable, a stroke of good fortune. A great deal of melancholic ambition will fall away from art, and a new innocence, yes, a harmlessness will become its portion." I thought of this statement as I looked at the politically constipated, incoherent offerings in Kassel; and the hyper-professional presentation in Basel, where sales were the order of the day. Mann's novel was published in 1947, with Germany still in ruins. It would be another eight years before artist Arnold Bode would initiate Documenta, as a way of showing that a new Germany embraced the most progressive cultural forms. By 1955 the modernist adventure was already sputtering to a conclusion that would arrive in the 1970s, in the farce of post-modernism. In retrospect, "harmlessness" was already well advanced in modes of post-war abstraction that embraced radical ways of splashing paint around but abandoned social content. Could anything be less engage than a massive stain by Morris Louis, or a hard-edged abstraction by Frank Stella?

Light artist Stephen Antonakos' installation at Documenta 14. Credit:Jens Meyer Such works were tacit admissions of art's inability to change the world, but they spread cheerfulness among collectors and curators who were thrilled by these big, bold, empty, eye-catching canvases. What Leverkuhn's prediction did not grasp was that a thoroughly harmless art would be presented as if it were a call to revolution. At this year's Art Basel it was fascinating to see how the abstract art of the 1950s and '60s had become a highly desirable commodity, fetching prices in the millions, with European artists such as Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana and Hans Hartung being treated like old masters. Even works by contemporary artists that dutifully echoed the styles of the '60s were selling for more than $US500,000. A Documenta 14 painting by Senegalese artist El Hadji Sy. Credit:Jens Meyer It's staggering to contrast the commercial buzz of Art Basel with the arrogance and complacency that distinguished Documenta 14. The show felt like a throwback to the utopian fantasies of '60s counter-culture at a time when such ideas have never seemed more inadequate.

This year's theme, Learning from Greece, was tinged with irony, for Greece is not only the cradle of Western civilisation but the dysfunctional economy that has put all Europe under strain. Many Athenians have not been especially delighted to be included in Documenta, which they have denounced as a patronising exercise. Song Dong's Through the Wall at Art Basel. Credit:Harold Cunningham a farce of opposition that treats audiences with contempt It's not just the Greeks who should be complaining. Documenta has a budget of €37.5 million, and is put together over 4½ years. This has resulted in an exhibition with inadequate signage; maps that are barely readable and give no indication of what might be seen at each venue; a catalogue that provides little useful information; and a philosophy of "anti-education" that means labels reveal nothing about the most enigmatic works. There are more than 160 artists included in the show (including three Australians – Bonita Ely, Gordon Hookey and Dale Harding), but the overall standard of work is woeful, and hardly flattered by a wilfully careless presentation.

Judging by his catalogue statement, this year's director Adam Szymczyk views the show as a political rather than an aesthetic project. He is aware of the apparent contradiction of taking an anti-establishment stance when vast sums of money are being injected by the city of Kassel and firms such as Volkswagen, but he makes no attempt to deal with the problem. Instead he recycles a farce of opposition that treats audiences with contempt, bestows a moral purity on the organisers and heaps scorn on the forces of capitalism that have paid for the entire event. He even sounds vaguely bemused that generations of avant-garde art activities haven't been able to forestall the rise of today's right-wing populism. One sample sentence will give you the flavour: "All this has occurred despite the fact that the neo-colonial, patriarchal, heteronormative order of power and discourse, which is precisely the hegemonic order supporting the neo-liberal war machine today, has long been the primary target of critical analysis and emancipatory actions." All these avant-garde activities have proved utterly harmless, as Mann might say, but neither innocent nor modest. On the contrary, the tone is smug and hypocritical. One turns to the shameless commerce of Art Basel with a measure of relief because all the art dealers, risking their own money and competing for attention with another 270 galleries, were obliged to do their best. There is no innocence to be found in the upper echelons of the art market, which enjoyed a record-breaking year, but one can appreciate its amoral concern for quality.

On the evidence of Kassel and Basel the art scene today is truly a world turned upside down, in which the alternative to the market place is a set of political attitudes indistinguishable from the sheerest decadence. What remains of art's "melancholic ambition" is an affectation funded by government and corporate sponsors. It's the high-end art dealers who have all the reasons to be cheerful.