Installed at MOCA Grand Avenue’s outdoor plaza in the spring of 1988, Knife Ship II (1986) replicates a 1985 sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen used in their two-day, multimedia performance Il Corso del Coltello (“The Course of the Knife”), a collaboration with Frank Gehry. The sculpture is over eighty feet long when fully extended and resembles a Swiss Army knife with oars, with a corkscrew mast and blades at the stern and prow. It is kinetic—the blades extend and contract, the corkscrew moves up and down, and the oars row—and is powered by three motors and a computer.
Il Corso del Coltello took place in Venice, Italy in September 1985 and included performances by Oldenburg, van Bruggen, Gehry, members of Gehry’s family, and students from the Polytechnic University of Milan, using characteristically absurdist props such as an eighteen-foot-wide espresso cup. For the finale, Knife Ship I launched from the historic Arsenale naval yard and floated in the lagoon, components in motion, like a giant, bizarre Venetian gondola. Knife Ship II was loaned and eventually gifted to the MOCA permanent collection by GFT (U.S.A.) CORP.