Helter Skelter accompanies the exhibition of the same name by American artists Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, running at Fondazione Prada in Venice from May to November 2026.
The graphic design concept for the book and exhibition is by Peter Saville, with a foreword by Miuccia Prada. It contains visual essays by the two artists and a conversation between them, a curatorial essay by Nancy Spector on ‘The American Vernacular: Unpolished Truths’, three essays delving into the artists’ practices by Aria Dean (‘Jokes’), Ashley James (‘Monster/Mythic/Mystery’) and Amy Taubin (‘Empathy and Adjacency’), nine texts about themes in contemporary American culture such as Black religiosity (Ashon Crawley), gender identity (Jack Halberstam), science fiction (Peter Watts), cars (Randy Kennedy), Black music (Ernest Hardy), Whiteness (Martin Lund), punk culture (Greil Marcus), millennialism (Dorian Lynskey), and pimping (Beth Coleman). The work also features the illustrated plates of the exhibited works, the exhibition and book checklist and Italian translations of the texts. Phew.
Fondazione Prada, 436pp, 17cm x 23cm, illustrated paperback