Taco Bell Art Heist
Now, I know that art isn’t necessarily the first thing you think about when you think of Taco Bell but please bear with me. There is a recently uncovered thriving black market for the artwork that you’d find in these fast food restaurants, let’s talk about it.
Westlake Ohio, 2015
Sometime between 11:00pm on Saturday night and 2:00am on Sunday morning in a Taco Bell in Westlake Ohio in 2015 a piece of art by artist Mark Smith was snatched off the wall of the restaurant. The police were immediately called but they were mystified, the captain said he didn’t think this was a highly calculated crime but more likely “an impulsive taco-and-beer-fueled crime of passion” (Cascone, 2015).
At the time they determined that the reproduction of the painting was worth around $800. Seeing as people are willing to pay for other funny pieces of merch like the Taco Bell perfume, that price for the painting didn’t seem inconceivable to the authorities. But unfortunately, even with searching “all dorm rooms and rumpus rooms in a ten mile radius” (Cascone, 2015) they came up with nothing and the case went cold.
2024: A Black Market Emerges
After the 2015 theft many people thought that it was a one-off. Now in 2024 a thriving black market for stolen Taco Bell art has been uncovered, some of it is even being offered on eBay for over $10,000.
When asked how he felt about this, Smith said “I think it’s really cool! There is this whole subculture of collecting and trading and stealing” (Cascone, 2024). He already knew his Maxfield-Parrish inspired work had a following because he regularly hears from fans on Instagram and sees photos of them posing in front of the reproductions in Taco Bell locations; one woman even commissioned a birthday card for her super-fan boyfriend (which Smith was happy to make).
The thing that stumps many people is how the sellers are getting their hands on these prints. One eBay seller said that he gets a lot of his stock from a man who renovates Taco Bells and that the prints are frequently being thrown away so he takes them and sells them instead. It also seems like the store employees themselves are sometimes in on this. “Multiple users who claimed to manage Taco Bell stores said they took the art during renovations and were willing to pawn the pieces off, while others lamented that shift leads and higher-ups ran off with them, beating their subordinates to it” (Bindman, 2024). They’re clearly a hot commodity.
Smith got this job making art for Taco Bell back in 2002 and he met with company executives. They had recently taken over a number of spaces for the chain restaurant locations but the interiors didn’t necessarily all work together. So they hired Smith to create some art with the brand colours to make everything feel cohesive from location to location. The original pieces were made with layered paper and paint and Smith says he took inspiration from Jean-Michael Basqueat and Willem de Kooning. The three works he ended up creating are called Drive Thru Man, Mothman, and Empty.
“Drive Thru Man, which is dotted with gray cars that pass through a bell-shaped icon and emerge as vibrant hot rods, points to the late-night fast food culture — a natural choice for Smith, who collects cars and motorcycles. Another piece, Mothman, quite literally represents what it feels like to be a drunk moth aimlessly floating toward Taco Bell’s much-too-accessible flame. Lastly, Empty — the one with the distressed looking yellow figure — was designed to evoke what it feels like to be struck by hunger pangs and low blood sugar, which is represented by the fuel gauge above his head. The bell floating above him is also a light bulb: a solution to his problem” (Bindeman, 2024). Apparently working within the Taco Bell official colour palette was challenging but he clearly made it work.
Taco Bell hasn’t released any information or commented about this story yet (if they do I’ll let you know), but Smith estimates that the prints of his work went to about 4000 locations and it’s not clear if Taco Bell is continuously printing more so who knows how many of these prints are still available and what one would have to do to get one once the eBay listings are sold.
When reflecting on all of this and of this potentially being Smith’s legacy or the thing that he’s best widely known for he said, “with this project, I was trying to reach out to a group of people that I thought did not get a lot of exposure to art, and it really worked! It entered the zeitgeist in some interesting way and it’s sort of been being kicking around for 20 years” (Cascone, 2024). Absolutely a measure of artistic success.
Works Cited
Bindman, Ariana. “One of the Most Unusual Heists in America Seems to be Unfolding at a Taco Bell”. SFGATE. 2024. https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/taco-bell-ebay-mark-smith-paintings-19464177.php
Cascone, Sarah. “How an Art Heist at Taco Bell is Fueling a Thriving Black Market”. ArtNet News. 2024. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/taco-bell-theft-fueling-collectors-market-2511825
Cascone, Sarah. “Art Heist at Taco Bell Stumps Police”. ArtNet News. 2015. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-heist-at-ohio-taco-bell-277971