It’s late into the evening, you’re on your second (third) slice of midnight cheesecake, and suddenly the scrolling stops. A lush, gorgeous painting catches your eye, the kind framed in an opulent gold frame with delicately carved accents. You picture it, above your bed, in the hallway to the dining room—it’s perfect, you decide, you simply have to have it. 

You love the idea of decorating your home with one-of-a-kind curiosities like it, but the thing is—maybe art has just never really been your “thing”. Sure, that ornately-framed French Rococo painting would look perfect in your guest room, but what exactly is gouache anyway? And what the heck does craquelure mean? Feeling out of your element, you think, “maybe all of it just isn’t for me.” That’s why we created this super simple guide designed just for people like you who want to save up to 80% buying at auction, but don’t want to invest in an art history degree. 

Ready for a crash course in art terminology? Keep reading to learn more.

An Auction Buyer’s Guide to Fine Art: 25 Terms to Know

1. Abstract Art: An art form that shuns figural representation, instead using shapes, colors, and gestural marks to achieve its effect. The depiction of real objects is entirely discarded, and often the viewer has to decide what it is and how it makes them feel.

2. Catalogue raisonné: An scholarly, authorized compendium of an artist’s total body of work or specific collections within it by a recognized expert in the artist’s work.

3. Chiaroscuro: Translated as “light/dark” in Italian, Chiaroscuro is an art technique that uses the contrast between light and dark tones to create a sense of the volume and depth of an object, on the flat surface of a canvas. This technique is most recognizable in artworks from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, where the viewer can often see where the light is coming from, and is used in all Realist art.

4. C-Print: C-Prints, or ‘C-types’ as they were originally trademarked by Kodak, were used for making prints from color negatives, but it is now standardly applied to all color photographic prints. The color negative or slide is exposed to Chromogenic photographic paper before it is submerged in a chemical bath to create a full-color image.

5. Contemporary: The term contemporary can be thrown around a lot in the auction world, but generally, it refers to art that is created during our present time.

6. Contrapposto: Contrapposto is a style of classical pose that is characterized by a subtle shift of the weight of the body onto one foot, creating movement and a relaxed overall appearance. (Think Michaelangelo’s David and Degas’ Little Dancer)

7. Craquelure: Often seen in tempera and oil paintings, craquelure refers to a network of delicate cracks that can develop on the surface of an older painting or artwork. Also used in ceramics,  to intentionally add a cracking pattern to the glaze, as seen in Chinese Ge ware pottery.

8. Daguerreotype: The Daguerreotype, named for its inventor Louis Daguerre, became the first publicly available photographic process after its development in 1839. The development of this process involved treating a silver-coated plate with light-sensitive chemicals before exposing it via a camera to create a latent image. The Daguerreotype became very popular as a 19th-century portrait photography technique until it was ultimately eclipsed by methods that produced more clear, detailed images.

9. Diptych: Sometimes connected by a hinge, a diptych is a two-panel artwork that is designed to be displayed together. You may also see a triptych, a three-panel artwork, or a polyptych, an artwork designed with four or more panels.

10. Etching: Etching is a type of intaglio (“recessed”) printmaking process that involves using acid to incise lines and textures on a metal plate.  The carved lines and textures hold the ink while the surface is wiped clean. Then the plate is pressed onto the paper. The ink in the grooves is transferred to the paper, thus creating the final image.

11. Foxing: This term refers to small brown spots of discoloration that can develop on old paper or books as they age.

12. Giclée: Giclée is a style of inkjet printing often used by artists when creating reproductions or digital art. It involves the use of a high-resolution image, pigment-based inks, and archival paper or canvas to produce a higher-quality and longer-lasting print.

13. Gouache: You may be familiar with different painting mediums, like acrylic and oil, but gouache? What the heck is that? This water-medium paint is essentially an opaque watercolor and has been used for centuries dating back to the Ancient Egyptians and mastered in 18th-century Rococo art. Traditional watercolors are somewhat absorbed by the paper’s surface, resulting in their ethereal and transparent look; gouache, however, is used to coat the surface to create a thicker, more pigmented effect.

14. Impasto: Impasto is a painting technique that involves applying thick layers of paint, either with a brush or palette knife, to create a visibly textured and three-dimensional effect.

15. Wabi-Sabi: Developed out of the aesthetic philosophy of cha-no-yu (the tea ceremony) in fifteenth-century Japan, wabi-sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

16. Lithograph: Yet another printmaking technique, lithography, is a method that involves drawing an image onto a flat stone or metal plate with a greasy substance and using water and ink to transfer the image onto another surface. The lithograph became a popular medium for artists working in France during the mid-19th century. In the late 1800s, the offset lithograph started to rise in popularity, which used a rubber plate instead of stone or metal, allowing artists to print on a wider range of materials.

17. Medium: The unique materials used to create a work of art.

18. Mixed media: Mixed media refers to artworks that are created using multiple mediums or techniques like found object collages and paintings or sculptures made from a variety of materials.

19. Pentimento: Maybe you remember drawing a portrait of your cat as a kid, only to pick apart its whiskers and start over, layering your second take at it on top. The pros get it, and they even have a term for it—it’s called “pentimento”. Pentimento refers to the traces of an earlier composition that can be seen beneath the surface of a completed painting.

20. Serigraph: Serigraphy, from the Latin “seri”, or silk, and the Ancient Greek “graphos”, or writing, is a manual printing technique that has been around for over a century. It involves using a stencil to apply ink to a surface, usually silk or fabric, in order to create a print. It is also commonly referred to as a “silkscreen” technique in more commercial settings. Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s Soup series is an example of a famous work reproduced using this process.

21. Sfumato: Sfumato is a specialized technique popularized in the Renaissance that involves fading colors and tones in a way to create subtle gradations of light and shadow and evoke a soft, hazy effect. Perhaps the most famed example of this technique in action? Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

22. Trompe l’oeil: This artistic term may seem impossible to pronounce, but its definition is even more mind-bending. Trompe l’oeil is a master of illusions—the combined dimensionality and perspective of the painting or artwork deceive its viewer into believing the work is somehow real. The Renaissance artists mastered this concept, paving the way for modern-day muralists.

23. Verso: You’ve likely seen the phrase “signed en verso or on verso” used to describe a lot at auction, but what does that mean? “Verso”, the antonym of “recto”, simply means “on the back” or refers to the back of the artwork.

24. Automatism Art: In art, automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious mind as part of the creative process.

25. Woodcut: Rounding out the finale with our last and final printing type, woodcut is a relief printmaking technique that involves drawing an image into a block of wood, then removing the rest of the wood, leaving the drawing on the raised part, and then using that block to create prints. It is one of the oldest forms of printmaking, frequently seen in Eastern art and dates back to Chinese textile design from the 5th century CE.

Congratulations—you’re now a cool and confident art terminology scholar! Buying at auction, but still wondering what the heck terms like reserve and hammer price mean? We’ve got you there too. Make sure you check out this post about online auction tips for beginners. You’ll be ready to bid on that cherubic Rococo painting in no time.

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