Sensual and real … Detail from the Death of Actaeon, by Titian, c 1565. Photograph: The National Gallery, London. Click image to enlarge
This is a first for the National Gallery. It has invited contemporary artists to respond to its collection before, but with Chris Ofili and Mark Wallinger involved in a collaboration with the Royal Ballet to celebrate the 16th-century painter Titian, this is a bit of a glamour injection for a gallery that has sometimes seemed to revel in an old-fashioned image.
I am in two minds. Titian does not actually need to be compared with or spruced up by any living artist to be made "relevant" because in any sense that matters he is a living artist, right now. His colours, brushstrokes, stories, characters – for he is a dramatist in paint – blaze with urgency and excitement.
Who can be bored by Titian? The first time I visited the National Gallery, when I was 19, his painting The Death of Actaeon leapt out at something sensual and real I could relate to. In all honesty, I would rather see a big exhibition about him than a clever modern take.
But this is London 2012 . It's a flash place, and the National Gallery cannot always be putting on exhibitions of Paul Delaroche. This exhibition is free and fun. Go and enjoy what Ofili (especially) has done. Then look at the Titians at the heart of the show and fall in love.
• National Gallery, London WC2, from 11 July until 23 September
Other exhibitions this week
Simon Patterson
New art from the man who reinvented the Tube map.
• Haunch of Venison, London W1, from 13 July until 1 September
Graham Gussin
A thoughtful, engaging artist responds to an English parkland.
• New Art Centre, Salisbury, until 9 September
We Face Forward
Art from West Africa now.
• Whitworth Gallery and other venues, Manchester, until 16 September
Mud Wrestling
Annual show by members of this Glasgow art hub.
• Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, until 28 July
Masterpiece of the week
Peter Paul Rubens' Death of Hippolytus, c 1611. Photograph: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Rubens, The Death of Hippolytus
This little painting is a roaring, shining, blood-curdling masterpiece of violence and terror. Rubens reveals his obsession with Leonardo da Vinci's lost Battle of Anghiari as he replicates and riffs off its explosion of staring eyes and whirling weapons in his depiction of a sea monster.
• Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Image of the week
The Shard in London – at 1,016ft (310m) Europe's tallest building – put on an amazing laser display to mark its inauguration. Photograph: Warren King/Rex Features What we learned this week
Art has started to magically come alive in China
That performance art is officially in takeover mode
That artist Richard Wilson took the ultimate inspiration from Michael Caine – by leaving a bus dangling off the roof of a gallery
What the tomb of a hippie, a man lost at sea and a tent up in flames have in common
That a new impressionist show exposes how strange Renoir, Manet et al could be
What the Old Master stroke of the week was
That important artists' documents have been found in the most unlikely places – from a scrapyard to a castle
And finally
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