This town needs an enema!

Well, what headline would you write?

Eduard Korniyenko reports for Reuters:

A health spa in Russia has unveiled a bronze monument of three cherubs carrying an enema, a design inspired by the 15th century Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.

Around 100 hospital staff and patients at the spa in south Russian cheered when balloons lifted a red drape into the sky unveiling the oversized version of the pear-shaped medical instrument.

“We administer enemas nearly every day,” said Alexander Kharchenko, the head of the sanatorium which specializes in treating illnesses of the digestion tract.

“So, I thought, why not use our sense of humor and give it a monument,” he said of the bronze statue that stands about 1.5 meters high.

The monument, designed by Svetlana Avakova, cost around $42,000; the artist says she looked to Botticelli’s “Venus and Mars” for inspiration:

“The irony is that the little infants steal the weapons of Mars. They joke with him, with the god of war, and war is a tragedy.”

“Likewise, an enema is an unpleasant procedure as many of us may know. But when cherubs do it, it’s all right.“

Further irony is that, in the fifteenth-century masterpiece, Mars is actually asleep; the cherubs are joking with or talking to Venus. But, hey, the end result is a line for the ages.

When cherubs do it, indeed. Strange as the work may seem, I admit I like it.