Hi Dave – I don’t know anything about the fine details of Charley Plymell’s honorary degree and the fact it failed to materialise, but, having been involved very occasionally with this kind of process (great artist Peter Blake received such an award from the University of Leeds), it can bring mutual benefits. An offshoot of the Blake arrangement was that our School Of Music had, for a dozen years, a standing exhibition of all his album artwork, including a signed, artist proof example of the Sgt Pepper sleeve.
Academic institutions, on the whole, are evil-backslapping, backstabbing dens of iniquity. Not surprising that Charles Plymell was denied an honorary degree. But one wonderful sidelight that emerges from Mr. O'Conner's most welcome piece is how someone told him the truth about honorary degrees -they're only granted when the award benefits the institution more than the grantee...Mr O'Connor's struggles with authority bring back to my mind a time -during the Sixties naturally- when going to college was more than a little shameful - a symptom of bourgeois aspiration in an age of aggressive transformation. "College was for suckers" so many people I knew, believed back then,as I did. "Beatdom" and institutionalized, academically acceptable counter-culturalism will ,i think, always manifest the shadow of the inherent contradictions between the drive for recognition & the imperatives of rebellion . And that's healthy...Degrees are most often a sign of defeat. Charles Plymell being denied an honorary degree says more about the narrow-mindedness and cultural timidity of the institution than it says about Charles Plymell -whose work and life stand as exemplary rebukes to the whole meaningless edifice of respectability.
Hi Dave – I don’t know anything about the fine details of Charley Plymell’s honorary degree and the fact it failed to materialise, but, having been involved very occasionally with this kind of process (great artist Peter Blake received such an award from the University of Leeds), it can bring mutual benefits. An offshoot of the Blake arrangement was that our School Of Music had, for a dozen years, a standing exhibition of all his album artwork, including a signed, artist proof example of the Sgt Pepper sleeve.
Academic institutions, on the whole, are evil-backslapping, backstabbing dens of iniquity. Not surprising that Charles Plymell was denied an honorary degree. But one wonderful sidelight that emerges from Mr. O'Conner's most welcome piece is how someone told him the truth about honorary degrees -they're only granted when the award benefits the institution more than the grantee...Mr O'Connor's struggles with authority bring back to my mind a time -during the Sixties naturally- when going to college was more than a little shameful - a symptom of bourgeois aspiration in an age of aggressive transformation. "College was for suckers" so many people I knew, believed back then,as I did. "Beatdom" and institutionalized, academically acceptable counter-culturalism will ,i think, always manifest the shadow of the inherent contradictions between the drive for recognition & the imperatives of rebellion . And that's healthy...Degrees are most often a sign of defeat. Charles Plymell being denied an honorary degree says more about the narrow-mindedness and cultural timidity of the institution than it says about Charles Plymell -whose work and life stand as exemplary rebukes to the whole meaningless edifice of respectability.