Ultra-Contemporary Art Falls Flat at London Sales

Art by young contemporary artists performed well at auctions in London this week, but few flew off the auction blocks in a frenzy as had been the case through early last year.

That led the total value of evening sales of works by artists under the age of 45 to sink 80% from a year ago to £1.9 million (US$2.41 million), according to the London art analysis firm ArtTactic. The total value of young contemporary art sold at evening auctions this week was also 63% lower than at the London evening auctions in February, which itself represented a 25% drop in value from a year earlier.

An uncertain global economy, high inflation, and persistent geopolitical conflicts, combined with the fact these sales come at the tail end of a brisk season of art buying at both auctions and fairs, likely all contributed. Also, the evening sale totals this June didn’t include Phillips, which opted to only offer a day sale.

At least a quarter of Phillips “20th Century to Now” auction on Friday of more than 100 works were by ultra-contemporary artists, a category the auction house has long led. But four lots on the block failed to find buyers, including paintings by Shara Hughes and Harold Ancart. With only a few exceptions, most others sold within presale estimates.

A standout was the very last lot of the sale: Belgian artist Albert Willem’s All in All Not Bad For His First Attempt, 2021, depicting an airplane with plumes of black smoke that landed in the middle of a city intersection, sold for £180,000, before fees, several multiples of a £15,000 high estimate.

Anna Weyant, Cloud Hill, 2020, which sold at Phillips for a hammer price of 225,000. Courtesy of Phillips

All-in-all, Phillips’ auction realised only £7.15 million, before fees, below a presale estimate range between £8.6 million and £12.3 million, according to ArtTactic. With fees, the sales brought in £9.1 million, with 84% of lots sold, Phillips said.

Overall evening sale results at Christie’s and Sotheby’s declined 22.1% from a year ago to nearly £219 million, before fees, with only five lots selling for more than £5 million, including Gustav Klimt’s Lady with a Fanfor a record price of US$108 million at Sotheby’s on Tuesday.

One reason ultra-contemporary works didn’t spark lofty bidding at this week’s sales is that many of the works weren’t the best examples from these artists, says Morgan Long, managing director of the Fine Art Group, a London art advisory.

According to Long, galleries have been cracking down on “flipping,” that is, buying works on the primary market and selling them soon afterward via the auction houses. The result: “You’re not getting access to and putting into auction really great primary material,” she says.

And, Long says, “most people who want good primary [works], have access” to them. A buyer who wants to see great works by Caroline Walker—a popular Scottish contemporary artist—can find high-quality examples at her gallery, Stephen Friedman in London. Lesser quality examples head to auction, she says.

There were three works by Walker sold at Phillips, including Reception, 2013, which sold for a price before fees of £140,000, below expectations.

Buyer hype for younger contemporary artists also cycles in and out of fashion. In May 2022, works by Anna Weyant led three evening sales in New York. This spring, sightings of Weyant works were scarce. Cloud Hill, a 2020 portrait by the artist sold for £225,000, before fees, at Phillips, below a £250,000 low estimate.

Currently, artists such as Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Julien Nguyen, and Sahara Longe are gaining more attention. “There are all these new ones that have cropped up in between the old guard of the young and the new guard of the young,” says Naomi Baigell, managing director at TPC Art Finance in New York.

Buyers, Baigell says, “are probably looking to see what they can get that doesn’t fly out of the saleroom. And because we’re still in this political and financial environment, the eye is much more discerning when they’re thinking of acquisitions.”

And, she says, collectors “want to start with artists that are going to increase in value, not ones that have increased in value.”

The price points for most works by young contemporary artists often fit the bill. During the London evening sales tracked by ArtTactic, three of the top five performing works were by young contemporary artists Louis Fratino, Yearwood-Dan, and Guglielmo Castelli. The top-selling young artists were Walker, Amoako Boafo, Fratino, Ahmed Mater, and Yearwood-Dan.

But newer collectors to the market are also drawn to newer works and to the access to the art world buying these pieces can provide. Since the start of the pandemic, these combined factors have drawn in a wider group of newer, often younger collectors in addition to seasoned buyers, Baigell says. That’s a far broader swath of individuals than those able to buy a Klimt for US$108.4 million.

Galleries are responding to this trend by seeking out and bringing in younger artists. For all these reasons, Baigell believes the ultra-contemporary art segment will continue to thrive and drive interest in the market.

“We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this 21st-century [art] be what is exciting to watch at auction,” she says.

Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.

The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.

Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.

Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.

Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.

These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.

Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.

Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.

Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.

“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.

“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.

Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.

“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.

That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.

“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.

They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.

An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.

What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.

One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.

But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.