Euphoric Victory (Siegesrausch) 1918

Lyonel Feininger made this watercolor called "Euphoric Victory" and you can really see the joy he gets from laying down washes of color and improvising these characters and their setting. He seems to be enjoying the process of artmaking above all else. The way the watercolor bleeds into the paper gives it this sense of immediacy, like he's capturing a fleeting moment or an emotion as it washes over him. I love how the red and blue figures seem to dance and collide, their forms dissolving into each other, especially the way he juxtaposes the top hatted blue figure in the foreground with the red figure just above. The whole thing feels a little unhinged, in the best way. It reminds me of Paul Klee's playful approach to form, both artists are happy to use art as a playground. Ultimately "Euphoric Victory" reminds us that art doesn't always need to make perfect sense; sometimes, it just needs to make us feel something.