Research question:

How have artists of the recent past destabilized the distinction between reality and imagination by turning to crime, specifically bank robbery?

Bank heists are the celebrity of crime; they are a topic of popular portrayal, a point of global fascination, and even the meat of artistic inquiry. Existing scholarship generally separates art from crime, situating art as the object of crime and considering it through a legal lens rather than addressing how crime itself might be the subject and content of art. I consider how crime, and specifically bank robberies, are a thematic area of creativity involving the real and the imaginary. I consider three case studies–Janice Kerbel’s Bank Job (1999), Joe Gibbons’s bank robbery (2015), and Pierre Hugyhe’s The Third Memory (2000)–which situate (fictional and/or real) bank heists as an artistic subject. This research considers how creative engagements with crime destabilize the demarcation between reality and fiction. Each case study considers artwork leading to a different outcome; these illustrate the ways in which artists have exploited the myth-like intrigue of crime, demonstrating how reality is grounded in fiction.