From Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries fame to "Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin and writer Tom Wolfe, we celebrate those dearly departed musicians, directors and artists whose legacies continue to resonate.
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Time to say goodbye: Significant cultural figures who passed away in 2018
Artists, writers, musicians, actors: In our picture gallery, we commemorate important artists who died in 2018.
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Aretha Franklin
The "Queen of Soul" died in August at age 76. Her celebrated career was marked by 18 Grammys and 25 gold record releases. Here she is seen here performing at the inauguration gala for President Bill Clinton in 1993. A vocal civil rights activist, Aretha Franklin also sang when America's first black president, Barack Obama, was inaugurated in 2009.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/A. Sancetta
Milos Forman
The Czech-American director, screenwriter and actor emerged as a dissident and new wave pioneer with his 1967 film "Firemen's Ball." A decade later he won an Oscar for directing "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1976) starring Jack Nicholson. Forman's Hollywood success peaked with his Mozart biopic "Amadeus" (1984), which again won him the Oscar for Best Director. He died in April 2018.
Image: picture-alliance/abaca/V. Dargent
Anthony Bourdain
With his 2000 memoir "Kitchen Confidential," Bourdain went from obscurity to celebrity chef superstardom. He was in France working on his CNN food and travel show "Parts Unknown" in June when he died by suicide. "His love of great adventure, new friends, fine food and drink and the remarkable stories of the world made him a unique storyteller," said CNN in a statement after his passing.
Image: picture-alliance /F. Gunn
Dolores O'Riordan
Her inimitable voice helped the band The Cranberries top the charts with their 1993 debut album "Everyone Else is Doing it, So Why Can't We?" It included hits such as "Linger," "Zombie" and "Dreams." The band split in 2003 but later reunited. A planned 2017 tour was cancelled due to O'Riordan's health issues, which included depression and bipolar disorder. She died in January at age 47.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/G. Souvant
Philip Roth
A sarcastic and melancholic chronicler of Jewish middle class life in 20th century America, Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for "American Pastoral," the 1997 novel called a "parable of American innocence and disillusion" by The New York Times. His renown was established with "Goodbye, Columbus," the 1959 novella that won the National Book Award. Over 25 novels followed before his death in May at 85.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/R. Drew
Stan Lee
Marvel Comics pioneer and co-creator of superheroes like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk died in November, age 95. "We all grew up with giants and ogres and witches. Well, you get a little bit older and you're too old to read fairy tales. But I don't think you ever outgrow your love for those kind of things, things that are bigger than life and magical," he said in 2006.
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V.S. Naipaul
When British author V.S. Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the Swedish Academy described him as a "literary circumnavigator." His themes were racism, post-colonialism and human dislocation. Born in 1932 in Chaguanas near Port of Spain, Trinidad, Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul died on August 11, 2018 in London.
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Burt Reynolds
"Burt Reynolds was one of my heroes," Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted after the actor died in September at age 82. Reynolds got his break in 1962 in the TV western series "Gunsmoke," followed by the lead in the detective series "Hawk." Mega fame came via big screen comedies such as "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977), "The Cannonball Run" (1981) and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982).
Montserrat Caballé is considered one of the great lyrical voices of the 20th century and probably the most universal Spanish opera singer ever. Her vocal qualities and technique made her a diva on a parallel to others like Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Renata Tebaldi. Caballé died on October 6, 2018.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T. Albir
Charles Aznavour
Following his death on October 1 at the age of 94, Charles Aznavour's funeral in his hometown of Lille was a state ceremony presided by President Emmanuel Macron and watched by all of France. A great French chanson singer who continued to perform in his nineties, Aznavour was also a composer who wrote world-class songs for the likes of Edith Piaf.
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Bernardo Bertolucci
Movies like "Last Tango in Paris," "1900" and "The Last Emperor" stirred controversy but made him world-famous. Bertolucci was considered the last of the great Italian auteur filmmakers in the tradition of Federico Fellini. His earlier art films, later transformed into Hollywood epics, won Oscars. His lifetime achievement was honored in Cannes and Venice. Bertolucci died in November at age 76.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sebastien Nogier
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In 2018, comic book fans mourned two of the industry's legends: Stan Lee, the man who invented Marvel Comics, died in November, just a few months after Steve Ditko, the artist and co-creator of various Marvel superheroes such as Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, passed away in June. The creator of the cult Nickelodeon animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, Stephen Hillenburg, also died in November.
Indie rock pioneers
Dolores O'Riordan had a string of global hits with her band The Cranberries in the 1990s, including "Zombie," a protest song against the Northern Ireland conflict and one of the signature songs of the era.
Following a suicide attempt, O'Riordan was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2013 and drowned in a bathtub hotel in January 2018. The autopsy revealed heavy alcohol intoxication. O'Riordan was 46 years old.
The name Richard Swift is less known, but the musician and composer had a defining impact on the indie rock scene of the past decade and before. The multi-instrumentalist played with the bands The Shins and The Arcs and accompanied the Black Keys on tour. He died from complications related to alcohol addiction at the age of 41.
Rapper Mac Miller, another highly gifted musician, was only 26 when found dead in his LA home after a well-documented struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. Miller had just released Swimming, his fifth full-length album, described by Variety as "a simple, stately, poetic autobiography."
German music fans were also shocked to hear that Demba Nabé, rapper and singer for Berlin band Seeed, died at the early age of 46.
The final curtain
Film lovers mourned the passing of Czech-American director Milos Forman in April and Italian auteur filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci in November. French director Claude Lanzmann, one of the great chroniclers of the Holocaust, also passed away in 2018 at the age of 92.
Lanzmann had worked on the epic 1985 documentary Shoah for more than 11 years. The nine-hour work recounting the genocide against European Jews focused on contemporary witness accounts. It's a work that remains unparalleled, and for which Lanzmann will not be forgotten.
Literary legends
Familiar in his white suits and hat, writer Tom Wolfe coined a reportage style in the 1960s known as New Journalism with books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He also had a world best-seller with his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. The keen observer of America's diverse social milieus died in May at age 88.
Germany also lost a few celebrated literary voices in 2018. Dieter Wellershoff is regarded as one of the most important German writers of the post-war period, composing more than 40 novels, short stories, plays and essays. A founder of the Cologne School of New Realism, he called for a writing style that focused on "everyday life." At the grand old age of 92, a pioneering literary movement passed with him.
Another German cultural trailblazer, Hilmar Hoffman, died this year in June having made history with his call for a "culture for everyone." He founded film festivals, cinemas, museums — and was head of the Goethe Institute.
Click through our picture gallery above to recall a few of the great artists and creators who passed away in 2018.
Bertolucci: Doyen of film history
While he couldn't be called overly prolific, Bernardo Bertolucci has very much gone down in film history. His works are sensual and overwhelming - some even show "delusions of grandeur." The celebrated director turns 75.
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Royal themes
He loves complicated tales and spares no taboo - and his films are, as such, both poetic and monumental. Amongst his greatest successes was "The Last Emperor," a film about the life of China's Pu Yi - who was called to take the imperial throne when he was just three years of age. The impressive drama won nine Oscars, two of which were awarded to Bertolucci.
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Father figures and role models
His love of film and literature is largely down to three men: his father, a respected literary and film critic, his neighbor, the famous filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the director Jean-Luc Godard. Each would have a profound influence over the young Bertolucci. This picture shows the three men (left to right) in 1969, at a meeting for the movie "Amore e rabbia."
Image: Reporters Associati – Roma
World fame with erotic drama
A grieving old man has lustful, but emotionless sex with a young casual acquaintance - 1972's "Last Tango in Paris," starring Marlon Brando, would bring the director great acclaim and fame. In the US, the scandalous film was a box office hit. In Italy, however, Bertolucci and Brando were convicted of "obscenity" and sentenced to two months imprisonment on probation.
Grand vision
A half-century Italian history in five hours - on the release of "1900", critics berated the director as having "delusions of grandeur." Starring Robert de Niro, Burt Lancaster und Gerárd Depardieu, Bertolucci's 1974 cinema epic tells of the struggle between landowners and peasants in the Emila-Romagna. The film was a "monument to communism", the director later said somewhat mischievously.
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From cult to popular
In the 1980s and '90s, Bertolucci transformed from an elitist filmmaker into a certified successful international director. His disillusionment with the political situation in Italy led the avowed Marxist - also fascinated with Buddhism - in search of other cultures. The result was "The Last Emperor" (1987) - the first western film production ever filmed in the Forbidden City.
Fascination with foreign cultures
The film "The Sheltering Sky" (1990) led Bertolucci to Morocco and the Sahara. Hollywood stars Debra Winger und John Malkovich play a couple wanting to 'find' one another again - but the story quickly spirals into tragedy. The film adaptation of the novel by Paul Bowles is held up by critics today as a "sensual and overwhelming" masterwork.
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Big man, little audience
One of his most exotic productions is the 1993 film "Little Buddha." His first film which moves away from his usual themes of political conflict, psychology or sexuality, Bertolucci wanted to endear this work to people of all ages. After "Little Buddha," Bertolucci would only make four more films, none of which proved a significant global success.
Image: picture-alliance/United Archives
Oscars, stars and palm trees
Throughout his career, Bertolucci received numerous awards, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, the Golden Lion in Venice, the Palme d'Or in Cannes and the European Film Award. Hollywood also paid its dues, issuing him a star on its notorious "Walk of Fame." Although he remains active, following a fall in 2003 the director has been confined to a wheelchair.