In all this doom and gloom art turns on the feelgood factor, writes Raymond Gill.

UNTIL RECENTLY, THE entire "mood" of contemporary art seemed in the main, and not to stretch a point, suicidal. The man on the street, if he had any opinion on contemporary art at all, which was unlikely, might have considered its subject matter as stretching from blurry video images of necrophiliacs, to creepy landscapes, and on to images of women swishing hula hoops made from barbed wire around their bloody midriffs.

If you thought Mamma Mia! was a bleak imagining of vacant, nihilistic, modern existence, then try Damien Hirst or Bill Henson.

The explosion of less arresting but much more overtly political art was also thrusting polemic down the viewer's throat: bleak explorations of the human rights issues of the Howard/Bush years: war, dispossession, alienation, incarceration and the erosion of human dignity. Ironically, these themes were explored in a time of economic prosperity when the art market was thriving.

But just as the economy appears to be disintegrating, something seems to be changing in contemporary art. To the growing beat of Obamarama, the funny old zeitgeist is embracing humour, even optimism. Throughout the galleries and studios across the globe, from the Australia of Kevin '08 to the glamazon comeback of Sarkozy, upbeat art is emerging at a time of looming recession.

The recent, financially successful Melbourne Art Fair at the Royal Exhibition Building showed that art can be more fun than the Flower and Garden Show, Home Show and Sexpo combined.

The art fair often acts as a barometer for the themes artists around the country and region are obsessing about, and this year proved that explosions of colour, wacky gizmos and furry, fluoro stuffed animals is where many are at right now.

There were geegaws, there was big, shiny, fun stuff that would look great next to the plasma, or in your nightclub, or by the pool. Buyers were picking up sparkly coated garden gnomes and having them wrapped there and then as art-to-go. There were bears in boas and works that seemed more interior decor than visual poetry.

And just when you thought the Myer porcelain department was where you went for kitschy little figurines of 18th-century ladies and boys holding balloons, you find that contemporary artists at the art fair had discovered old-fashioned knick-knackery but tricked up their dollies with subversive cultural references and art world in-jokes.

It seems everyone's a joker these days. Only a few years ago local artists Callum Morton and Patricia Piccinini were getting all the attention for the humour in their toy-town and mutant-monster sculptures, but now every artist is David Letterman with an ironic one-liner.

The cynical might say that the art at the art fair is selected by the private dealers who deliberately choose the bright, sunny stuff to keep the collectors' minds on a happy retail experience and off the economic downturn, but even the public spaces are becoming refuges of light and joy.

At the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Southbank - a public institution that has never been shy about embracing serious hard-going art - Scottish artist Jim Lambie has created a disco inferno on the gallery floor made from multi-coloured electrical tape that makes you want to take to the floor, completely forget about art and just have a good time.

In London at the Hayward Gallery its current summer blockbuster, Psycho Buildings, has various world art stars making with gags and gimmicks. These include a giant transparent inflatable ball the visitor can bounce in, a cutesy village of dolls' houses by Rachel Whiteread, and a man-made lake on the gallery roof where you can clamber into a boat made from found objects and row about under the London Eye.

Even the National Gallery of Victoria is finally loosening up and allowing its humourless, brutalist, bluestone exterior to get animated. New York artist Chris Doyle's Ecstatic City will see video projections of leaping figures across its stony facade during the Melbourne Festival in October.

But perhaps the biggest breakout of happiness is set to happen at the end of the year at the agenda-setting Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. Its summer show, titled Contemporary Australia: Optimism, will include commissioned work by 35 artists that is about a "modern word for a positive attitude towards the world, expressing belief in favourable outcomes and that good will ultimately triumph over evil".

As the American election approaches, perhaps art is the rallying call or even the herald of change. Just as that nation may now be ready for a tall, skinny, black man to take the helm, the art-going public may be ready for art that . . . wow . . . makes you feel good.