Roy Lichtenstein’s ...Huh? (1976) is an arresting meditation on perception, ambiguity, and the language of images — a work that epitomizes the artist’s enduring fascination with the visual codes of popular culture. At once humorous and disquieting, it captures a fleeting, cinematic moment frozen in the sleek precision of his Pop idiom.

A woman’s face, rendered in Lichtenstein’s immaculate Ben-Day dots and bordered by thick black contours, commands the composition. Her wide, questioning eyes and parted lips suspend the viewer in a moment of uncertainty — the instant between recognition and confusion. The speech bubble, bearing the hesitant ellipsis and the monosyllabic “Huh?”, becomes a minimalist stage on which emotion, narrative, and irony collide. The entire scene is distilled to its essence: a gesture, a glance, a sound — the visual poetry of the everyday.

The colors are characteristically Lichtenstein: bold primaries of red, yellow, and blue balanced with black and white, their interplay heightening both the immediacy and artificiality of the scene. The mechanical precision of the dots contrasts with the soft vulnerability of the figure, creating a tension between machine-made perfection and human uncertainty.

Beneath its apparent simplicity lies a subtle psychological depth. The question “Huh?” is both literal and existential — a moment of confusion that mirrors the viewer’s own position before the work. Is it surprise? Bewilderment? Irony? In Lichtenstein’s world, meaning is always mediated by form, by print, by artifice. He transforms the vernacular idiom of comic books into an arena for high contemplation, where irony and sincerity coexist in delicate balance.

...Huh? is more than an image of a woman in mid-thought; it is an elegant reflection on the nature of communication itself — how we speak, how we see, and how meaning slips between image and text. In this painting, Lichtenstein fuses wit with restraint, emotion with geometry, leaving us suspended — as she is — in that shimmering instant of wonder and doubt.

Created in 1976, this Lichtenstein pop art screenprint in colors is hand-signed by Roy Lichtenstein (New York, 1923 – New York, 1997) in pencil: ‘rf Lichtenstein’.  Numbered from the edition of 100, this work is published by Original Editions, New York.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:

Roy Lichtenstein, . . . Huh?, 1976 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the final sale of the work).

1. Corlett, Lee Mary. The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein A Catalogue Raisonee 1948-1997. Hudson Hills Press: New York, 1994. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 149 on pg. 149.
2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this work.

About the Framing:

Roy Lichtenstein, . . . Huh?, 1976 is framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.