Artists they left us in 2021.

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This year, as pandemic deaths ebbed and flowed, a distinctive, eternal beat — that of artist’s deaths — played on as usual, bringing its own waves of collective grief. Some, such as Cicely Tyson and Stephen Sondheim, held the spotlight for generations. Others, like Michael K. Williams and Nai-Ni Chen, left us lamenting careers cut short. Here is a tribute to just a small number of them, in their own words.






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“I’m not scared of death. I don’t know what it is. How could I be afraid of something I don’t know anything about?”

 

 






Melvin Van PeeblesCredit...Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

“I want people to be empowered and also have a damn good time.”

“I want my steps to speak.”

“I remember my childhood often, I remember a lot of the past. But when it comes to music, I always look forward.”

 

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Bob AvianCredit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

“When my parents went out, I would push back the furniture, clear an open space, turn on the record player and leap around the apartment.”

“School was a crashing bore and a terrible chore, until one day when I was cast as the girl with the mandolin in ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”

“As I grew up in Kyoto, the wood of the Buddhist statues, trees, the grain of the wooden pillars, the patterns on the floor, the stones in the gardens, the bamboo, trees and plants in Kyoto are all a part of me — and as I read a script, I borrow from all these things.”

— Emi Wada, costume designer, born 1937

 





 

Joan DidionCredit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

“There’s a lot of landscape that I never would have described if I hadn’t been homesick. If I hadn’t wanted to remember.”

“I still feel sky-deprived when in the forested places. Many, many people born to the skies of the plains feel that way.”





 

Ed AsnerCredit...Wally Fong/Associated Press

“My father told me, ‘You didn’t make a success as a student, you’re not going to make a success as an actor.’ I said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’”





 

Olympia DukakisCredit...Abramorama

“I came to New York with $57 in my pocket.”






 

Charlie WattsCredit...Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

“When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was to go to Birdland. And that was it. I’d seen America. I mean, I didn’t want to see anywhere else.”





 

Jacques D’AmboiseCredit...John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

“Spread me in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”