The 100 coolest Americans

Photographic exhibition of the 100 most cool Americans includes film star James Dean, writer Ernest Hemingway and singer Madonna

Clockwise from top left: James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, Elvis Presley, Mae West, Tom Waits, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Debbie Harry 

By Martin Chilton, Culture Editor online

The Telegraph -  06 Feb 2014

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 a hundred actors, actresses, artists, musicians and writers in the United States whose creativity and style have 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 two curators came up with four defining factors of cool, of which people chosen had to fit at least three categories:

• originality of artistic vision and especially of a signature style
• cultural rebellion, or transgression in a given historical moment
• iconicity, or a certain level of high-profile recognition
• recognised cultural legacy (lasting more than a decade)

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. 
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