The Lost Generation of Artists

The Lost Generation of Artists
Coined by	Charlotte Fang
Related concepts	State Propaganda Complex, New Net Art
Field	Digital art, cultural theory

The Lost Generation of Artists is a term used within Remilia theory to describe the cohort of Millennial artists—primarily products of post-2000s MFA programs and institutional art circuits—whose work and worldview became spiritually exhausted, technologically obsolete, and ideologically captured during the rise of the internet-native avant-garde. The concept identifies these artists as cultural casualties caught between traditional artistic establishments and the emergent digital paradigm, ultimately failing to meaningfully participate in either world.

According to Charlotte Fang's critique, millennial artists came of age during the transitional era between the early web and the smartphone-driven digital world. Many pursued institutional validation through MFA programs, critical gatekeeping, and gallery systems that promised both legitimacy and stability. Yet as the internet subsumed cultural production, these artists failed to adapt to the new distributed model of authorship and attention.

The concept positions this generation as victims of the State Propaganda Complex—artists conditioned by institutional incentives to fear and avoid serious engagement with the internet, leaving them alienated from the very medium through which culture was increasingly being produced and distributed. In Remilia thought, this isolation rendered them "the lost generation": creators without faith, conviction, or audience, whose artistic authority collapsed as the New Net Art and Remilia movements rose to prominence.

Oscar Murillo's Untitled (Drawings off the wall) (2011), also known as Tamales. Within Remilia discourse, this piece typifies the spiritual exhaustion of institutional millennial art.

Historical context

The Lost Generation concept emerged from Fang's broader analysis of cultural transitions in the early 21st century. According to this framework, millennial artists occupied a precarious position in the collision between two epochal systems:

Institutional capture

According to Fang, the Millennial generation's formative years coincided with "the most technologically advanced propaganda ministry in history." Having grown up before widespread digital literacy but entering adulthood under the full dominance of algorithmic media and institutional ideology, they lacked both technical agility and cognitive defenses against centralized information control.

Fang argues this made them uniquely vulnerable to capture by the State Propaganda Complex, resulting in a form of ideological compliance and aesthetic paralysis. Artists who might once have explored the web as a frontier instead internalized the establishment's fear of it—viewing online participation as unserious, vulgar, or career-damaging.

Technological displacement

As digital networks became the primary medium for cultural production and distribution in the 2010s, millennial artists who had invested in traditional artistic infrastructure found themselves increasingly disconnected from emergent forms of creativity and audience engagement. Their education had emphasized physical media, institutional legibility, and critical theory frameworks that struggled to account for memetic circulation, collective authorship, and network-native aesthetics.

This technological gap widened as younger creators embraced digital platforms not merely as distribution channels but as primary artistic environments. While millennial artists attempted to transpose pre-digital artistic paradigms onto the internet, a new generation was creating art that was fundamentally constituted by the network itself.

Cultural diagnosis

In a series of May 2024 posts, Fang described the millennial art establishment as "clinging to institutions the undergeneration has written off and moved on from," calling them "a garrison of the obsolete," still "holding fort over an emptied castle taking potshots from the ramparts." They contrasted this with the rising generation's decentralized creative networks that "returned the seat of meaning to the people."

Fang's analysis portrays the millennial cultural class as defined by cynicism, careerism, and spiritual exhaustion:

"They have no actual interest in supporting or engaging the arts, they're just trying to find their own security... They came of age in between the advent of the internet and the actual internet revolution... without any cognitive opsec or immunity... Your average urban millennial is sick—mentally, physically, spiritually. They gave themselves entirely to the cathedral and it destroyed them."

This critique frames millennial artists as casualties of their own institutional investments—creators who sacrificed artistic authenticity and spiritual depth for the promise of professional stability and critical validation. In Fang's view, this bargain ultimately failed as the institutions themselves lost cultural authority in the face of networked alternatives.

Key characteristics

The Lost Generation of Artists is characterized in Remilia discourse by several defining traits:

Institutional dependence

Unlike previous artistic avant-gardes that positioned themselves in opposition to establishments, the Lost Generation sought validation primarily through institutional channels: MFA programs, gallery representation, critical attention from legacy publications, and positions within universities or arts organizations. This dependence fostered a conformist attitude toward prevailing ideological and aesthetic norms, limiting genuine artistic innovation.

Spiritual exhaustion

Fang's analysis emphasizes the spiritual dimension of millennial artistic failure. Having absorbed the materialist frameworks dominant in academic settings, these artists approached creativity as a career rather than a vocation, producing work without transcendent purpose or metaphysical depth. This spiritual vacuum left them unable to generate meaningful cultural impact or connect with audiences seeking authentic meaning.

Technological alienation

Despite living through the digital revolution, millennial artists remained fundamentally alienated from the technological substrate of contemporary culture. Their relationship to digital platforms was primarily instrumental—using them for professional networking or documentation—rather than understanding them as primary sites of artistic creation and community formation.

Ideological capture

The Lost Generation's susceptibility to the Cathedral resulted in aesthetic and ideological uniformity. Their work frequently reproduced approved political positions without genuine conviction, resulting in a predictable cycle of performative critique that failed to challenge actual power structures or offer alternative visions.

Contrast with New Net Art

The concept of the Lost Generation gains significance primarily through contrast with the New Net Art movement championed by Remilia. Where millennial artists clung to institutional structures, New Net Artists embraced the distributed, pseudonymous, and post-authorial nature of digital networks. This contrast appears across several dimensions:

Authorship models

While millennial artists maintained traditional notions of individual authorship and creative ownership, New Net Artists explored collective creation, anonymous/pseudonymous production, and the deliberate dissolution of authorial claims. This shift reflected what Fang describes as the inherently distributed nature of creativity in digital environments.

Spiritual orientation

Against the secular materialism of institutional art education, New Net Art embraced what Remilia terms network spirituality—a framework that views artistic creation as communion with collective consciousness through digital networks. This spiritual dimension provided a purpose and coherence absent from the work of the Lost Generation.

Technological integration

Where millennial artists remained alienated from digital technologies, New Net Artists fully inhabited the internet as both medium and message. Their work emerged organically from the affordances and limitations of digital platforms, embracing rather than resisting the transformative effects of network distribution on artistic practice.

Cultural authenticity

Fang's critique suggests that millennial artists produced work aimed primarily at institutional gatekeepers rather than genuine audiences. In contrast, New Net Art emerged through direct engagement with online communities, developing forms and aesthetics that resonated with the lived experience of internet participants rather than the expectations of critics or curators.

Legacy and significance

Within Remilia's theoretical framework, the Lost Generation of Artists serves as both historical diagnosis and cautionary example. It represents the inevitable fate of creative communities that fail to adapt to technological and spiritual shifts—becoming isolated from the vital currents of their time and ultimately irrelevant to emerging cultural formations.

The concept also functions as a justification for Remilia's rejection of traditional artistic institutions and practices. By identifying the specific failures of millennial artists, Remilia positions its own approaches—network-native, spiritually engaged, technologically integrated—as necessary responses to a cultural impasse.

As Fang summarized in a March 2024 post: "The zeitgeist seeks a return to meaningful art made by artists with conviction in the post-millennial void of cynicism." This framing positions the rise of Remilia and New Net Art as the necessary successor to the spiritual and aesthetic exhaustion of the Lost Generation.

See also

• Tamales
• The Wired Eats the Real
• Millennialism
• Millennial Gatekeeping
• State Propaganda Complex
• New Net Art
• Remilia
• Charlotte Fang
• Network spirituality
• Post-authorship