Say what you will about the quality of his work, but modernist artist Marcel Duchamp was, without a doubt, revolutionary. He rocked the art world of the 1910s with his ‘readymade’ sculptures, which consisted of old pieces of junk Duchamp happened to find on the street that he would then dub a ‘sculpture.’

In 1984, the Olympic Arts Committee commissioned a series of murals to be painted on the walls in between the Alameda Street and Grand Avenue exits of the Los Angeles 101 Freeway in order to showcase the rich culture of the city for the upcoming Summer Olympic Games being held in the city. There were no plans made to maintain them; just like everything else erected for the games, they no longer served a purpose after the Olympics were over.