The last time anarchy seized the cultural moment was in the late 1970s, with a musical revolution called “punk rock.” Since then, it’s been fairly quiet on the Western front (artistically speaking, that is). Anarchy and Art is a compendium of essays by University of Victoria historian and professor Allan Antliff on the years when riotous art and artists were at the centre of things – moreover, when there was a centre of things.

Anarchy and Art looks at the role of art and artists in European anarchist history, from the movement’s origins in the 19th century to the still-kicking organizations of today. The eight-chapter survey begins with the Paris Commune of 1871 and the outrage provoked by the activist artist Gustave Courbet, and ends with a reappraisal of anarchist art after the collapse of Communism.

After a daunting, overly academic first section – four pages in, the reader is hit with a fusillade of Kantian and Hegelian theory – the book recovers, offering a vivid tour of the historical barricades. It also reminds us of the potent status once accorded to art in the West, the fact that dissident artists could be – and often were – bankrupted, exiled, or even executed for disturbing the peace.

What the book doesn’t do is end successfully. The present-day anarchist artists that Antliff cites seem interesting but marginal, and there’s little sense of how anarchy can flourish in a world of iPhones, Anna Nicole Smith, and the streets according to 50 Cent. Anarchism was born out of the inequities of industrialism; in the 21st century, the old revolutionary tools feel blunted. Anarchy and Art is an excellent guide to the rebel yells of the past, but is frustratingly quiet about the future.