Stuffy and stifling: why a top woman artist has spurned the RA

She is, said one close colleague, "a typical Nineties woman, real- ale drinking, roll-your-own- smoking". She is also an internationally acclaimed artist.

The last attribute is the reason why Rachel Whiteread at 34 was elected to membership of the Royal Academy. The first two characteristics are part of the reason why she turned it down. Today's young British artists do not want to be part of the art establishment. But they are pragmatists. They do want their work to be seen. And so, despite any distaste for joining the establishment, Ms Whiteread has agreed, the Royal Academy confirmed last night, to have her sculpture shown there this autumn.

Her plaster casts of familiar household objects will form part of Sensation, an overview of the Young Turks of today's art scene, which will also include the man who turned pickled sheep into an art form, Damien Hirst. But for the young Turks, actually becoming an Academician is another thing all together, seen no longer as an honour but as an unwelcome accolade of respectability.

Ms Whiteread, a former Turner Prize winner who this week became the first woman to represent Britain with a solo show at the Venice Biennale, said she preferred working in her studio to serving on committees and did not see herself as an establishment person.

But Matthew Collings who has interviewed all the leading young British artists for his new book Blimey! A History of British Art from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst, said yesterday none of the young British artists saw any relevance in the Royal Academy.

"It is an archaism, a preserve for old men with beards," he said. "Rachel is not even a controversial character like Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin. I think her work is crazily over-rated and there are elements of poetry and history attributed to it which it cannot be seen to possess, but she is an inoffensive person.

"But she would see the Royal Academy as a total irrelevance. It doesn't figure in the lives of these young artists. The last time it was avant- garde was in 1980 when some of them were too."

Karen Wright, editor of Modern Painters magazine, said: "If there was a Tate Royal Academy, Rachel would join like a shot. But she would find the Royal Academy stifling. She likes to be in control. In addition, the radical young artists do not like to be associated with the annual summer show."

However, the Academy's deputy secretary James Robinson disputed that it was an establishment club.

"It's just not true," he said. "If you are elected you are elected for life so some of our members are quite old. But the Royal Academy now is about promoting art to the widest range of people possible. Being an RA is not an honorary post or membership of some club. You have to govern the place and it takes commitment. Rachel Whiteread is incredibly busy. She actually told us she felt flattered by the offer but didn't have the necessary time."

Ms Whiteread is the biggest name to turn down RA membership since the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro in 1990. But that was for aesthetic rather than sociological reasons. He was unhappy with the standard of work submitted for the architectural section of the summer show.

The only other refusenik in recent years was the abstract painter Jack Smith. The late Sir Stanley Spencer resigned from the RA but later joined again.

The late Sir Henry Moore is probably the most famous 20th century artist not to have been an RA. Both the Royal Academy and the Henry Moore Foundation say he was never offered membership.

He probably did his cause no good when, in 1931, he said of sculpture at the Royal Academy: "When it is not incompetent, it is purely commercial."