He may have retired from teaching, but Mel Ramos’s work will continue to irritate feminists forever.

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Mel Ramos is an acclaimed American figure painter. He didn’t exactly go to painting school, but he managed to locate the art department in San Jose State College which is where his foray into the art world begins. He started off by dipping his brush in the Abstract Expressionism pot (not a sex pun, believe it or not) because well, that’s what all the cool kids were doing! Plus, teachers like Wayne Thiebaud were also nudging him in that direction. But, after temporarily succumbing to peer pressure, Mel realized that this type of thing just wasn’t for him, and decided to paint whatever he felt like painting.

This brings us to his first ever superhero painting, aka one of Batman. After that, it was just good sense to paint more comic book characters like Superman, the Green Lantern, etc. Naturally, this sort of popular subject-matter in the 1960’s put him in the same category as peeps like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, with whom he did some group shows as well. When he couldn’t find any more male heroes to paint, he did a Wonder Woman or two (in a manner of speaking). Ramos claims at this point he noticed how the womenfolk in comic books were starting to look a tad too sexy for young children, which lead to a lot of these comic books being censored so as not to excite the underage readers. This inspired his next subject: voluptuous (and often nude) pin-up type ladies usually emerging from commercial, everyday objects. Because Ramos realized that sexiness is what advertising thrives on. Way to piss off the feminists, Mel! When asked why he was drawn to this type of painting, Ramos replied laughing: “Well, that’s kind of self-explanatory. I’m a heterosexual man and I find painting beautiful women very satisfying.” I can totally sense all you ladies bristling at this comment and fervently blogging about this (because that's exactly what I am doing).

But Ramos claims he was never exploiting or objectifying women *eye roll*, and none of the women in his personal life thought so either. Case in point, his wife, who even modeled for him...apparently only till she had the body for it. He even had Pamela Anderson of Baywatch fame model for him!! Feminist or not, Ramos has his work up in lots of famous galleries like the de Young in San Francisco and Galerie Ernst Hilger in Austria. He hung up his 41 year old teaching hat and is living the retired life in Oakland, California.