The Pop Art collages of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi and, more recently, the wayward sculptures and installations of artists like Phyllida Barlow would be unthinkable without the inspirational presence in Britain of Kurt Schwitters. Yet the German emigré is hardly a household name.

Unusually for a Turner Prize, or for contemporary art generally for that matter, it was the year that film outshone other media. Paul Noble may have initially been the popular, and the bookies' favourite, but as technically impressive as his panoramic drawings are they are also quite lifeless, made inert by the process of their meticulous execution.

There are two films in the Turner Prize exhibition and taken together and watched end-to-end they last just under three hours. That sounds gruelling for an art exhibition, but they’re from the strongest two candidates on this year’s shortlist. And since neither is one of those poorly filmed and edited pieces that are best viewed as moving wallpaper as you drift in and out of the gallery, both are worth devoting time to.

The vividly dramatic story of Isabella, from a poem by Keats (in turn from Boccacio’s Decameron,) crying over her lover Lorenzo, who, base born, was murdered by her brothers, was much admired by the Victorians. The tale is not for the squeamish: the widowed mistress resolutely dug up the corpse and detached the head, which she then buried in a pot of basil.

Unadulterated happiness: swinging on the wheel, high above the ground, at the fair on Hampstead Heath in 1949, in Wolf Suschitzky’s photograph that effortlessly conveys that sense of moving at ease through the sky.  Fourteen years earlier the same photographer, just arrived from Vienna, immortalised a gravely courting couple smoking their cigarettes over a tea in Lyons Corner House, the behatted lady apparently entertaining a genteel proposition; and inbetween Suschitzky shows us the view of total devastation in 1942, flattened streets strangely punctuated by arbitrary heaps of rubble,

Where’s Marcus Coates? The gangly shaman-artist was last seen communing with the dark spirit of the soon-to-be demolished Heygate Estate in the Elephant and Castle, but, hell, he’s nowhere on the Turner Prize 2012 shortlist.

Pablo Picasso is the presiding genius of 20th century art, the most influential artist in the modern period, lauded for his protean inventiveness, originality, individuality and overwhelming productivity. In 1934 poet Geoffrey Grigson declared that he was all the history of modern art, in 1942 the artist Jankel Adler observed that “Picasso, the greatest innovator of the twentieth century, has knocked on the door of every painter’s studio in the world”. Too true: his ghost is still present amongst art’s practioners and its audience.

Billed as an exploration of the contribution made by immigrants to British art, Migrations is ridiculously ambitious. Starting with the sixteenth century, it hops and skips through to the present day, inevitably leaving out a lot of people on the way. Hans Holbein who settled here in 1532 and, as the King’s Painter, produced that splendidly iconic portrait of Henry VIII, which establishes the monarch’s authority by making him look as square and solid as a rock, is not included.

George Shaw might have been the popular favourite, but it was Martin Boyce who carried the vote to win this year’s Turner Prize. The 44-year-old artist from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, follows fast on the heels of two fellow Scots: Susan Philipsz won the prize in 2010 and Richard Wright in 2009. But neither seemed as much of a clear-cut choice as Boyce, for although the public vote wasn’t his, the critics were pretty much united in backing him.

The 2012 Cultural Olympiad has been announced and events will take place throughout the UK from 21 June until the last day of the Paralympics, 9 September. Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad, said that many events would be free, and that “the festival will offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be inspired by the best in the world”. Events will range across the arts, from music, dance, theatre, opera and film to literature, the visual arts and fashion, and some will include a chance for arts fans to participate in the creation of an artwork.