Future Relic: Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist

Inspiration is for amateurs. I’m a professional artist: I wake up every day and go to work.

This is the mindset that transformed Daniel Arsham from a student scraping by in his Brooklyn studio into one of the most sought—after artists of his generation. In Future Relic, he breaks through the mystique of the art world and shows what it really takes to make it in any creative endeavor.

From a childhood in Miami working with his first camera in the wake of Hurricane Andrew’s devastation, to form...