Sometimes you stumble upon an article and it just… wow.
Over at i09.gizmodo.com, we have this article by Beth Elderkin:
The Mystery of Illinois’ Short-Lived Cookie Monster Mural
The mural in question:
Basically, what we have here is a joke mural, showing the Cookie Monster as being some kind of hero to the Soviet Union. A funny, pretty well done mural…
…but…
Read the article, I implore you! I’ll spoil a little of it below but truly you should read the article to get the full story.
Anyway, someone who claimed to own the building the mural was painted on contacted an artist and commissioned this mural. The artist was paid but told to paint the mural quickly which, after they planned it out, they did. This was NOT an easy task. The mural was large and required three people to paint it.
Thing is, once the mural was done, the REAL owner of the building contacted the artist, furious that he had painted on his building and threatening to sue, or worse, call the police for vandalism!
The artist explained what happened and offered to paint over the mural for free, but the owner of the building, apparently not wanting any more to do with the artist, did so himself.
The mural is gone, but clearly this was some very elaborate-and expensive!- practical joke done on the owner of the building.
As for who actually hired the artist, and why choose this particular theme/picture, I hope one day we find out!