The American artist Mel Ramos (1935, Sacramento – 2018, Oakland) repeatedly explored the boundaries between fine art, popular culture, and advertising throughout his career. He elevated comic-book heroes to the realm of high art and combined imagery drawn from advertising, everyday consumer culture, and erotic photography with the great traditions of art history.

A student of painter Wayne Thiebaud, Ramos was closely associated with the Bay Area Figurative School, which emerged in the 1950s as a reaction against the dominance of Abstract Expressionism. Beginning in 1961, he turned to comic-strip characters and superheroes as subjects for his paintings. His depictions of women, in particular, reflect the social and cultural transformations of the 1960s and 1970s.

Ramos portrayed women with an openly sensual appeal, yet as confident and self-determined figures. His stars and starlets stand in a tradition that reaches from the goddesses of antiquity to the superheroines of the comic-book universe. Rather than offering a critique of consumer culture, his work can be understood as a newly formulated celebration of beauty. Marilyn Monroe was among his most enduring and influential muses.