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Podcast: New Books in Art
Episode: Alana Jelinek, "Between Discipline and a Hard Place: The Value of Contemporary Art" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Description: Some fields have an easier time describing themselves than others. "History is the study of past events." "Biology is the study of living organisms." But art? Is art a discipline? Is it a practice? Who gets to answer this most fundamental of questions, and why do we prefer not to try? Between Discipline and a Hard Place, written from the perspective of a practising artist, proposes that, against a groundswell of historians, museums and commentators claiming to speak on behalf of art, it is artists alone who may define what art really is.Between Discipline and a H...