When Picasso was messing about with African masks he believed in the magical power of objects – probably a throwback to his days in Catholic Spain as well as the mystique of bullfighting and its role in reinforcing the male ego. African nations have moved on since colonialism to embrace other forms of male totemic power to sort out territorial disputes, notably the AK47 and RPG. However, that is not the point. Objects having magical power and the religions from which they derive are not just the playthings of modernist artists looking to subvert the past and reinvent beauty as ugliness but the stuff of contemporary art.

Having a cultural background that stems from Aborignality, Maori heritage or even Persian Suffism is a distinct point of difference and it helps if you can explain your art in a language few understand just to add a note of authenticity. Whereas Picasso embraced the exotic in creating the myth of Picasso, today’s artists don’t see themselves as heroic or in the throes of genius. The much written-about superficiality of 21^st century society would have better suited an ironic Warhol who while acknowledging that the artistic past existed, was more concerned with poking fun. The same can’t be said of this generation. Khaled Sabsabi, soon to be part of the Adelaide Biennale Inner Sanctum, draws upon an unearthed gnostic tradition of mystic Sufism and a grimore or book of magic spells which spawned a new language which could lead followers to an ecstatic plane of spiritual enlightenment. Meanwhile cross the water, Anton Forde of New Zealand draws upon Maori myths with his sixty carved sentinels arranged in a V shape made famous by the All Blacks performing a Haka. They face the Pacific on the slopes of Cottesloe and Bondi Beach for Sculptures By The Sea. His videod introduction in dialect reinforces his authenticity and the spiritual nature of his work.

With the faithful voting with their feet and leaving pews empty, there is obviously a spiritual vacuum. Can the same be said of art? When there was a Western Tradition to fall back everyone felt comfortable. After all, bible stories and the fate of the soul were still dining room topics of interest and artists willingly obliged in reinforcing the position. The cult of personality that was the 20^th century relieved some of the spiritual angst – Elvis was a god incarnate. Of course, Picasso, Duchamp and Pollock all filled his shoes in the art world but their influence was short lived unless you count the squillions of Pollock imitators still operating under the delusion that they are being original. But once Minimalism removed the artist and the ego from the equation there wasn’t much left but Tracey Emin having a wow of a time with sexual jokes and Damien Hirst preserving a variety of dead animals in formaldehyde. You could call them art gods of a sort but they didn‘t have a mystical cultural background to call upon that wasn’t a nod and a wink to recent incandescent modernism. Wrapped in opaque Artspeak, they were there to fill the void.

Art history does have a place as a sort of religion but nowadays it is hardly ever used. Plotting a course from Monet to Abstraction and identifying the two main thrusts of the modern era in Cubism and Surrealism gets you only so far. The confusion of multiple definitions of what constitutes art and how to define it and establish meaning based upon precedent, hardly accounts for the urgency to discover or create a new path for humankind that isn’t defined by Amazon and Google – more recent gods. Hence, the exotic, the mystical and adventures in Sufiism with Khaled Sabsabi.

The art world seems not to have yet found a modern form to express the modernity in which we find ourselves – if we even knew what it was in the first place. The myriad approaches to art and the forms it takes are most confusing and suggest not only a lack of direction but a lack of an underyling moral and ethical rectitude to guide it and humankind has always had to invent rules for living in case it accidentally killed itself off. It is much safer to go with non-Christian mysticism which while inexplicable to the ‘man’ in the street at least has the ring of something genuine, deep and motivational. And it’s not the first time art and music have gone down this path with the Beatles leading the vanguard to India and dragging the likes of Peter Blake and Jann Haworth into the fold with their cover for Sergeant Pepper for which they won a Grammy. Blake said that he wanted to show a newish band with their new legion of followers. Gods indeed and a religion of sorts and even though the fab four drew upon black American blues artists living with depression and the pioneering white imitators, it wasn’t the same as sitting down with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who could claim a spiritual heritage going back to the beginnings of time. George even learned the rudiments of the sitar and conversed with Ravi Shankar.

So, are there yet more obscure religions and cultural leanings upon which to draw? As Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s giant work Yam awely, 1995, gets hung in the National Gallery of Australia as the national treasure it undoubtedly is, her body of work fills a void of spirituality and connection to land that has nothing to do with the obsession of land acquisition and ownership driving the current economy and driving houseless victims to despair while the gods of avarice profit. That she hailed from Utopia in the middle of desert country says a lot.

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