Tamales

Tamales is a meme and cultural reference emerging from a March 2024 exchange between art critic Dean Kissick, artist Charlotte Fang, and members of the Remilia milieu. The term refers to Oscar Murillo’s painting Untitled (Drawings off the wall)—informally nicknamed “tamales”—which failed at auction and came to symbolize the collapse of the Millennial MFA-owned art world. Within Remilia discourse, Tamales represents the exhaustion and moral decay of that milieu—the so-called The Lost Generation of Artists—and contrasts sharply with the conviction-driven, spiritually charged ethos of Remilia’s New Net Art movement.

“Tamales” meme remixing Murillo’s Untitled (Drawings off the wall), March 2024.

In Remilia Mythopoetics, Tamales stands as a totem of the Lost Generation of Artists—a concise meme encapsulating the fall of the Millennial art world and the birth of a new, conviction-based digital avant-garde. Its enduring function is as an ironic sigil: a reminder of what Remilia’s New Net Art seeks to transcend—nihilism, institutional capture, and the death of artistic faith.

Overview

The Tamales moment began on March 9, 2024, when critic Dean Kissick observed the declining market for millennial painting compared to the explosive valuation of Milady Maker:

“We’re at this funny inflection point where the Millennial painting market appears to be collapsing (many lots going for under their estimate, or unsold, or withdrawn completely), while Milady Maker is worth $200 million. Speculators should’ve just bought loads of weird NFTs.”

Kissick’s comparison between faltering post-MFA paintings and Milady’s network value drew immediate response. Designer David Rudnick quipped, “Miladys are just the Murillos of our time”. Fang replied with a Milady edit of the image, depicting a a Milady head overlayed onto a child holding up the painting as if it was their own art. The meme rapidly circulated as a shorthand for the death of institutional art.

Fang’s Critique

In a pair of viral tweets, Charlotte Fang expanded their response into a broader cultural diagnosis. She framed Tamales as a symbol of the nihilism of the Millennial art class—artists trained and professionalized within neoliberal art schools and institutions, yet spiritually hollow and detached from genuine conviction:

“It’s simple: the zeitgeist seeks a return to meaningful art made by artists with conviction & a light to shine on contemporaneity, not the empty nihilism of millennial MFAs—this can only exist today outside a neoliberal art world, which demands savvy financial self-platforming... They came for money & fame—not art, not god, not truth. A lost generation of artists.”

Fang followed with a direct attack on the Murillo painting itself:

“I mean just look at this. Tamales. I almost feel sorry for them, they got chewed up and spit out by the financial machine they emptied themselves into. Their only legacy is demonstrating the consequences of profaning Art—communion with the beyond—into a shrine to nihilistic hedonism.”

Tamales thus became emblematic of The Lost Generation of Artists—artists who, in Fang’s framing, had “profaned Art” by submitting to the demands of institutional capital and social prestige. Within Remilia’s conceptual framework, Tamales marks the final stage of the neoliberal art machine: self-referential, spiritually vacant, and economically exhausted.

The term came to signify the end of institutional art’s moral authority, contrasted with the rise of new net art's internet-native creation. Tamales operates both as parody and indictment: a single image encapsulating the gap between a transcendental art revival and the cynicism of its predecessors.

Reception and Derivatives

Commentators described the Tamales exchange as:

“A searing critique of the bleak hellscape of the post-MFA IRL art market and the ease at which a generation of class-descendant-by-choice painters aesthetically capitulate to its demands... a market driven by xanax-mouthed interior decorators acting as intermediaries for hedge fund managers who see art as an appreciative asset to be kept in duty-free vaults in Delaware.”

Following Fang’s critique, artist Daniel Keller tokenized $tamales on Pump.fun, announcing a plan to “acquire the paintings” as a tongue-in-cheek reclamation of failed institutional symbols. In October 2024, he relaunched the project as $tamales2 following an NFT Strategy model.

Daniel Keller publicly offered to deliver the Tamales painting to Charlotte Fang, to which they suggested they would grind the painting in a blender and drink it.

See also

• The Lost Generation of Artists
• New Net Art
• Milady Maker
• Charlotte Fang
• Dean Kissick

References

• Kissick, Dean (@deankissick). "We’re at this funny inflection point..." Twitter (X), March 9, 2024. [[1](https://x.com/deankissick/status/1766158253296148798) Direct link] | [Archived at: Internet Archive].
• Rudnick, David (@David_Rudnick). "Miladys are just the Murillos of our time." Twitter (X), March 9, 2024. [Direct link] | [Archived at: Internet Archive].
• Fang, Charlotte (@CharlotteFang77). "It’s simple: the zeitgeist seeks a return..." Twitter (X), March 9, 2024. [[2](https://x.com/CharlotteFang77/status/1766364986832789980) Direct link] | [Archived at: Internet Archive].
• Fang, Charlotte (@CharlotteFang77). "I mean just look at this. Tamales..." Twitter (X), March 9, 2024. [[3](https://x.com/CharlotteFang77/status/1766371438297297016) Direct link] | [Archived at: Internet Archive].
• Keller, Daniel (@daniel_keller). "$tamales token launch announcement." Pump.fun, March 2024. [Archived at: Internet Archive].
• Anonymous commentary, “Post-MFA collapse thread.” Archived screenshot, 2024.

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