Alfred Brendel (yes, the pianist): “Has there ever been a major avant-garde movement that was so closely tied to laughter and the grotesque? Laughter was the Dadaists’ favorite instrument … Traditionalists see Dadaists as silly people. To a degree, they are right. Silliness was liberating from the constraints of reason. Silliness has the potential to be funny, to provoke laughter, and make people realize that laughter is liberating.”