In the context of this artwork, analyze the Press condemnation of the Reception.
The work was widely condemned in British newspapers and periodicals and its exhibition quickly became controversial. In an early edition of the Melody Maker, a British weekly music magazine, London-born critic Edgar Jackson demanded the painting be encindered:"Breakdown" is not only a picture entirely nude of the respect due to the chastity and morality of the younger generation but in the degradation it implies to modern white woman there is the perversive danger to the community and the best thing that could happen to it is to have it ... burnt!
The world press likewise fixated upon the painting. In the United States of America, a journalist for The New York Times assailed the work as "this year's problem picture." After conceding that "as a protest against the jazz age, the picture seems undoubtedly effective," the Times journalist nevertheless opined that the work would excite needless controversy and should not have been exhibited. Similarly, Boston Evening Transcript criticised the work under the headline "A Racial Outrage" and claimed the painting was designed "to horrify decent people". Likewise, in South Africa, the Cape Argus deemed the work to be a "problem picture ... Negro Supersedes Minerva".
Minerva Melody Maker The New York Times Boston Evening Transcript United States jazz music magazine United States of America Cape Argus