Why the Impala?

When one peruses the junk shops, pawn shops, antique shops, and now even museums of the popular arts, in any country of the so-called Western World, the 21st century browser/visitor often encounters an interestingly recurrent decorative motif, chiefly from the 1920s: the figure or image of a southern African species of antelope, called the impala. It is found in blown glass, brasswork, carved wood, cast bronze, carved stone, in bas reliefs and intaglio, on the handles of canes, as bookends, as the bodies or on glass shades of lamps, as table center-pieces, and decorating cases, chests and intimate containers of the boudoir, all of it running in quality from the carnival trophy to the Cartier masterpiece. As to why this animal should have struck a chord with Westerners in that era has never been sufficiently explained beyond the mere aesthetic analyses of Art Deco theoreticians of art history. However the image of the impala might have agreed in form with the general cultural milieu of decorative trends, I have a special hunch about why this creature in particular resonated with the spirits of everyone from the working class to the elite. The 1920s was when Westerners began to dare take deep soulful breaths again. During the preceding decade of the 'teens, a four-year war (1914-1918) had been fought (i.e., WWI) in which 15 million people had died (both civilian and military). Then the Great Influenza Pandemic hit (1918-1920) killing possibly as much as another 50 million people in Western nations alone. All this death shook people to their core of tolerance, and it was a major slap in the face of the optimism that had dominated Western Civilization for a century, born of decades of unimpeded scientific and technological advancements. People were dismayed that all that progress had largely culminated in the lethal facilitation of a scale of warfare never before known to human history. Not surprisingly, artists, craftspeople, and folk just wishing to create a happy domestic refuge turned to simple embodiments of nature, of which the impala was one of the most popular. So what might this creature stand for as a symbol to those people living (already) some 90 years ago from where we now stand? In nature, the impala is one of the most beautiful animals to behold, possessing an anatomical grace of organic design and movement that is nearly matchless across the animal world, and this creature obtains levels of speed and agility that, by comparison, make even the most athletically accomplished human beings de facto "slugs" in terms of our own optimal physical accomplishments. And yet, the impala is the most vulnerable and preferred prey of the hunting beasts sharing its environment, every stripe of carnivore from jackals to cheetahs. In essence then, the impala is fragile beauty, and I think that is the touchstone of meaning that moved people's psyches back in the "retreat-to-dreamland-to-lick-our-wounds" years of the 1920s. I wonder what animal strikes the most touching chord in us now?