It seems the New Zealand art market has not only recovered from its post-2008 financial crisis contraction but is experiencing an all-time high.
What does this show about art and ourselves?
Webb's, the Auckland auction house, has published its review of 2013 and according to the head of its fine art department, Sophie Coupland, ''the New Zealand secondary art market, in fact, witnessed the highest turnover it has ever recorded at $20.3 million''.
Without questioning Ms Coupland's veracity, it would be helpful to know a bit more about the basis of her claim. One supposes she is mostly looking at auction sales in New Zealand of work by New Zealand artists.
Outside this, there are secondary sales of work by New Zealand artists overseas. Also there are works by non-New Zealand artists sold by someone other than their maker, in this country.
This is to say nothing of the primary market in which the artist sells a work to its first, second owner.
I mention this to make the point that, by several understandings, ''the New Zealand secondary art market'' is something rather larger than the phenomenon Ms Coupland is discussing and the whole New Zealand art market is larger again.
No matter; the reported results are still interesting. Ms Coupland believes that, compared with the early 2000s - ''regarded as a high point in the market's history'' - there is now more ''refinement and maturation'' and sellers and buyers are ''now more aware of comparative price points''.
While prices rose and some records were set, there were not the wildly unexpected prices that occurred in the earlier period.
She also said ''It is also worth noting that since the early 2000s, sales of high-value works [here defined as above $100,000] by Ralph Hotere have contracted significantly. Although a large part of the market once comprised [sic] of Hotere sales, the top 10 prices for 2013 saw a complete absence of the artist's practice.''
Ms Coupland offers no explanation for this. Are we to conclude Hotere's prices have softened? I'm not inclined to think so but rather that many major works are now in public ownership and the owners of those that are not aren't thinking of selling them.
Hotere died last year amid signs the critical establishment still held him in the highest regard. It is true, though, as Ms Coupland notes, that younger artists are becoming ''established'' in the buying public's perception.
Looking beyond people of my generation, such as Bill Hammond, it was interesting to see that Kushana Bush, a Dunedin artist, achieved a personal record for the re-sale of her Turnbunkle Squat. The price of $8800 wasn't staggering but doubtless represents a significant rise on that paid for it originally.
Both here and overseas, the market has become much more focused on ''recent and contemporary'' work, defined in different ways but representing more than a generational shift.
My view of this is that it represents a post-World War 1 wide acceptance that ''something has changed''.
If you visit the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's show ''Speed and colour: British linocuts of the 1930s on loan from Te Papa'' - and I recommend you do - you will see the productions of artists who felt there was a change and it had something to do with the speed of modern life.
They were interested in technology and many others have pointed to such developments, then and now, as the cause of the change.
It was significant, of course, and still is, but there were other things that had a larger effect. Long ago, in every part of the world, human beings developed religious and dependent moral beliefs in response to little-understood phenomena in an often hostile environment.
In Europe by 1914, this was Christianity maintaining we live in a world created by an omnipotent, wholly benign deity. The Bible allows there is evil in this setup, which seems a bit inconsistent.
World War 1 produced about 10 million fatalities, mostly from the supposedly culturally and certainly technologically advanced nations of Europe.
This helped cause a widespread loss of conviction in the local religion. How could a benevolent almighty produce something like this?
The Depression and World War 2, with about 50 million fatalities and the Holocaust, reinforced the effect. People in the West, especially Europe, no longer looked at the world in the same way.
This view is still being slowly exported but it conditions the world in which art is made. Art reflects that back, indirectly, and the art market more indirectly again. But the signs are fairly clear: the world has changed and while human nature hasn't, people view things differently.
They value things that 60 years ago were generally considered incomprehensible. Plus ca change, as the Frenchman said, but it's a significant shift.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
