Portraits of the Americans whose style and creativity shaped the concept of cool are exhibited in Washington
You know the 100 coolest Americans must be a pretty hip bunch if Janis Joplin, Chet Baker, Dean Martin and George Clooney fail to make the cut.
Elvis Presley, James Dean, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna do make the choice of 100 actors, artists, musicians and writers whose creativity and stylehave shaped the concept of cool. There is even a welcome place for country singer Willie Nelson in the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
The exhibition, which took five years to bring to fruition, has been put together by Joel Dinerstein, professor of American civilisation at Tulane University in New Orleans, and Frank Goodyear III, co-director of Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
To make their selection, the curators came up with four defining characteristics of cool, of which the people chosen had to exhibit at least three:
Another deciding factor was that there had to be a good picture of the person and among the photographers featured in the show are Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edward Steichen and Herman Leonard.
Dinerstein, who is also an adviser on HBO show Boardwalk Empire, is a jazz expert, and musicians are well represented in the list, starting from Bix Beiderbecke and Bessie Smith in "The Roots of Cool" section to legends such as Miles Davis.
Billie Holiday.
Dinerstein said: "It was in the 40s and 50s that cool was truly born, with jazz legends like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Lester Young coming to the fore."
Dinerstein credits jazz saxophonist Young with coining the use of the term "cool".
"Cool is America's greatest cultural export," said Australian Kim Sajet, who took over last year as director of the National Portrait Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian network of museums.
The list opens with 19th-century poet Walt Whitman, author of
Leaves of Grass
, who is described as "the guiding light of American bohemia", and includes modern culturefigures such as Jay-Z and Quentin Tarantino.
Faye Dunaway.
Dinerstein said: "There are people on this list who I wish were not, but our culture has elevated them to cool. My example is Quentin Tarantino. I don't like his films and I don't like him. But there's no question of his national and global influence both on art and film and everyone under 40."
Just under a quarter of the 100 are women - including Madonna, Mae West and Bonnie Raitt - and the list includes, bizarrely, some non-Americans (such as Canadian-born Neil Young and Belgian-born Audrey Hepburn).
People will obviously disagree with the choices - Sidney Poitier, Slim Gaillard, Louis Armstrong, Groucho Marx could all have been in the 100 - and the curators have tried to mollify critics by doing an "Alt 100" list of also-rans that includes Sam Cooke, Joplin and Stan Getz.
The Roots of Cool
Fred Astaire Bix Beiderbecke Louise Brooks James Cagney Frederick Douglass Greta Garbo Ernest Hemingway Zora Neale Hurston Jack Johnson Duke Kahanamoku Buster Keaton HL Mencken Georgia O'Keeffe Dorothy Parker Bessie Smith Willie "The Lion" Smith Mae West Walt Whitman Bert Williams
The Birth of Cool
Lauren Bacall James Baldwin Humphrey Bogart Marlon Brando Lenny Bruce William S Burroughs Raymond Chandler Gary Cooper Miles Davis James Dean Duke Ellington Dizzy Gillespie Woody Guthrie Audrey Hepburn Billie Holiday Jack Kerouac Gene Krupa Robert Mitchum Thelonius Monk Anita O'Day Charlie Parker Jackson Pollock Elvis Presley Frank Sinatra Barbara Stanwyck Muddy Waters John Wayne Hank Williams Lester Young
Muhammad Ali James Brown Jim Brown Johnny Cash Angela Davis Joan Didion Faye Dunaway Bob Dylan Clint Eastwood Walt Frazier Marvin Gaye Deborah Harry Jimi Hendrix Bruce Lee Steve McQueen Bill Murray Paul Newman Jack Nicholson Bonnie Raitt Lou Reed Carlos Santana Patti Smith Susan Sontag Hunter S Thompson John Travolta Andy Warhol Malcolm X Frank Zappa
The Legacy of Cool
Afrika Bambaataa Jean-Michel Basquiat David Byrne Kurt Cobain Johnny Depp Missy Elliott Tony Hawk Chrissie Hynde Jay-Z Steve Jobs Michael Jordan Madonna Willie Nelson Prince Susan Sarandon Selena Tupac Shakur Sam Shepard Bruce Springsteen Jon Stewart Quentin Tarantino Benicio del Toro Tom Waits Neil Young
