1. (Andrey) collected progressive philistine art ...His bride found the ranch yard adorned with a sculpture, if that’s the right word, by old Heinrich himself and his four hefty assistants, a huge hideous lump of bourgeois mahogany, ten feet high, entitled ‘Maternity,’ the mother (in reverse) of all the plaster gnomes and pig-iron toadstools planted by former Vinelanders in front of their dachas in Lyaska.

2 ..As had happened on previous occasions, around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and scrapes suddenly came from above: it was the cretin upstairs dragging a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture (catalogued as "Pauline anide") from the center of his studio to the corner it occupied at night. ( Transparent Things)

I wonder if VN's harsh words against HM's scultpures, classed amid "philistine art" in general ( Ada), added to his angry dismissal of "the cretin upstairs" equally "maternal " sculpture (Transparent Things), reappear in his other novels in a more explicit and particularized way. I'm also curious about this connection bt. trashy art and proliferating maternal decorative Kitsch. Many VN characters are sterile ( Van, for example, quite explicitly so): is this somehow connected to VN's assessment of Modern Art and, say, Duchamp's "ready mades" and a trend towards popularization of art ?

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.