Cool, then, is theater without drama, demonstration without
pleading, distinction without status, and dissent without
violence—a discourse of peers and citizens. . . .
It is also the very emblem of the way cool art functions
in a secular society. It sits there, like Washington at
the Continental Congress, or hangs there, like a Warhol
in the living room, a seamless, secretless incarnation
of recognizable power, less an object than a location around
which our anxious quarrels about value, virtue, and meaning
may swirl. — Dave Hickey, from "American
Cool"
