Arts Award Winners Celebrate a Double Victory : Arts: State artists receive Governor’s Awards for excellence; they also approve of House decision to renew the arts agency.

California artists who were honored Thursday night at the second annual Governor’s Awards for the Arts ceremony at the Beverly Hilton had two victories to celebrate: their own awards for artistic excellence from the California Arts Council, and the House approval of the compromise that may signal the end to a year of bitter debate over government funding of arts projects that could be considered obscene.

Gordon Davidson, artistic director of the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, who received an award for his contribution to the performing arts, drew cheers when he began his acceptance speech by exulting over the approval. “The system works!” he said.

At a gathering before the $250-a-plate dinner, a benefit for the California State Summer School for the Arts, Davidson said that he welcomed the House decision despite concern that the compromise may not represent a panacea for all conflict between artists and the National Endowment for the Arts. “Just the victory of dropping the obscenity clause is major, considering how strong the other voices were,” Davidson said.

Davidson added that he was surprised and pleased by the acquittal last Friday of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center and its director Dennis Barrie, charged with obscenity and child pornography for exhibiting photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe. “It’s so interesting how the Cincinnati decision came down, given the strength of opposition in that community,” Davidson said. “It just goes to show that the law is still the law.”

Writer/producer Luis Valdez, honored for literary arts, said the acceptance of the compromise has resolved “a tremendous issue.”

“It is an issue of conscience,” Valdez said. “It reflects back on the vitality of the arts themselves. The arts are very much like scientific research--(art) is exploring the nature of the human being. If you limit scientific research, science will not be able to develop things that advance the science; it is the same thing with art.”

Frank Gehry, honored for architecture, said he was “very pleased” about the House vote. “I was very pleased about the decision in Cincinnati as well. There’s hope!” he said.

Other artists attending the ceremonies were equally elated. “ I think it means that we won,” said actress Tyne Daly. “By ‘we’ I mean the American public, the audience, and the artists in general.”

Actor Paul Winfield said he had followed the NEA controversy since its inception. “I’ve really been concerned, because I am sort of a product of public funding, through scholarships and fellowships--so I think it’s very important,” he said.

“But the thing that makes me most upset about this whole brouhaha is that the United States spends more on military vans than on the entire NEA budget,” Winfield said. “It seems stupid to me not to support all facets of our culture--whether someone deems it obscene or not.”

Artist David Hockney reacted to the decision with less enthusiasm than some other artists at the ceremonies. “It’s rather good, isn’t it?” he said. “I don’t know--frankly, it (the controversy over obscenity) all seemed to me rather a storm in a teacup. . . . I’ve only followed it a little, and I don’t know what all the shouting is about, really.”When told that an amendment to abolish the NEA entirely had also been defeated, he said: “Frankly, I think art would go on whether they have it or not.”

Other winners of Governor’s Awards were Mrs. Walt Disney for contributions in the visual arts; artist Sam Francis; the Walter and Elise Haas Foundation of San Francisco for its Arts in Education program; E.H. Franklin, manager of community programs for Chevron USA, for the company’s patronage of the arts; and Spectra, an arts education program for elementary and junior high students in Santa Cruz County.