Dance cancelled: the Matisse masterpiece we won't be seeing next year. Photograph: Royal Academy/PA
Today's news, that Russia has decided to pull a major exhibition due to appear in London, is terrible, and a bit obscene. Of course, it's empty and sentimental to say art should be free of politics. But when we're talking about paintings as distinguished as Matisse's Dance (above) or Cézanne's stupendous 1906 view of Mont St Victoire - to take just two of the masterpieces whose loan to the Royal Academy in January now appears to have fallen through - there's something unutterably depressing about treating such high achievements of the human spirit as mere diplomatic counters.
The bureaucrats responsible for this ought to be ashamed, for acting in the worst and most philistine traditions of the soulless politician down the ages. And since some of those bureaucrats are involved in running museums, it's quite scary.
Having seen the Dusseldorf showing of the exhibition of modern art from Russia whose London visit now looks doomed, I can confirm what a loss this will be. We've missed a unique opportunity to see treasures of French and Russian modern art from four great museums in London - and there is no exaggerating the greatness of some of the art involved. That late Cézanne, from the Pushkin Museum, is perhaps his most intense and anxious and evocative work. In it you can see the beginnings of Cubism. It is painting as philosophy and confession - art as emotional thought. It has something so true in it. To be able to see this in the same exhibition as Matisse's ravishing Dance and Picasso's mighty Dryad, not to mention a tremendous Kandinsky and rare examples of Malevich's Suprematism - this is a chance of a lifetime. And it appears to have been taken away.
Russia must reconsider, and the British government should do more to smooth the way. Sod you politicians who have no hearts, no feelings. This isn't funny and it isn't just the RA's headache. In fact, at a time when westerners are xenophobic towards "immigrants" from eastern Europe, this exhibition reveals the noble part Russia has played in the making of Europe's culture.
And what about the Royal Academy? What will they put in those empty galleries? Oddly enough this is the least of worries, because there is no more creative curator than Norman Rosenthal. Doubtless he will seize the opportunity to put on some wild contemporary art blockbuster. No, this isn't just the RA's loss. It is a loss for anyone who wants culture and civilisation to survive in this darkening century.
