Two hundred years ago the Royal Academy placed fig leaves over the male sculptures that were exhibited in its Summer Exhibition. This year the fig leaf is a notice on the entrance to one of the galleries, reading, “there are some works in this gallery which may cause offence”, a sure way of drawing crowds, regardless of the artistic quality of exhibits.

A number of Royal Academicians (RAs), artists who govern the institution, told The Times that they were dismayed to find that the 2008 exhibition included close-up photographs of a woman's genitalia during menstruation, an automaton depicting a zebra having sex with a woman and a video of a woman dancing in a hula-hoop of barbed wire that cuts and draws blood from her body.

They felt that Turner - the great 19th-century painter who unveiled several masterpieces at the Summer Exhibition - would have been offended, condemning the exhibits as infantile, offensive, perverted and unworthy of the last bastion of traditional and skilled artistry.

The controversial works by various artists in the 2008 Exhibition have been selected by Tracey Emin, as a newly appointed RA.

Speaking to The Times yesterday, she insisted that there was nothing shocking about them. She said: “The majority of people will be titillated and enjoy what they've seen. It's not shocking in a provocative way.”

Admittedly, it would take a lot to shock an artist who believes in airing her dirty laundry in public, literally. Cultivating an image as a foul-mouthed hellraiser of Brit Art, she came to fame by showing a bed strewn with soiled underwear, stained sheets and a used condom and, in confessional works, went on to tell us about her rape, her depression and her voracious appetite for sex.

At the 2007 Venice Biennale, where she represented Britain, she showed that her ability to shock had not waned in a show filled with drawings of genitalia, masturbation and explicit poses involving her body. The RA admitted that they had put up the warning after taking legal advice. Hearing about their content from The Times, Mark Stephens, head of media and international law at Finers Stephens Innocent, said that the RA was likely to receive complaints, just as it did over its 1997 Sensation show and the portrait of the Moors murderer Myra Hindley created with children's handprints.

He said: “This takes it to a new level beyond anything we saw in Sensation.” But he added: “The law will permit these kinds of thing to appear in an art context ... On one level, there's a desire to shock, disgust, offend - but safe in the knowledge that it's unlikely that any successful proceedings will be brought.”

On artistic grounds, however, the works were condemned by several RAs. One of them, the sculptor Ivor Abrahams, said: “It's a disgrace. They are using the RA to shock us with pretentious rubbish. This isn't truly representative of the RA. It's provocative and offensive. It's like the old pier entertainment. You put your penny in and look at ‘what the butler saw'.”

Each year the Summer Exhibition divides the critics. Last year Brian Sewell wrote in The Evening Standard: “At the Royal Academy, it must be said, merit does not matter any more.”

The 2008 Summer Exhibition will be at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, from June 9 until August 17 2008.

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