A male beast without tail in strange art in flat (7)
I believe the answer is:
tabular
'flat' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'a male beast without tail in strange art' is the wordplay.
'male beast' becomes 'bull' (male cow).
'without tail' means to remove the last letter.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'strange' indicates anagramming the letters.
'a'+'bull'='abull'
'abull' with its last letter taken off is 'abul'.
'art' with letters rearranged gives 'tar'.
'abul' inserted into 'tar' is 'TABULAR'.
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for tabular that I've seen before include "(Of data) presented in rows and columns" , "Arranged in rows and columns" , "Flat" , "in an array" .)