Toronto Sees Spate of Mahler Graffiti

The graffiti began appearing around Canadian Thanksgiving Day weekend (Oct. 6-8) on the Queen Street Bridge, the walls of old factory and loft buildings, and a side wall of the Ontario Design Centre. There was no attempt to use artful calligraphy or include a stencil of the composer's image or of musical notation — there was simply the composer's name, in capital letters, rendered in spray paint.

The appearance of the graffiti was reported with some interest on several Toronto-based blogs as well as on the news and culture website Torontoist (part of the Gothamist family) and on music critic Alex Ross's blog The Rest Is Noise.

Things became less intriguing and more upsetting when the Mahler graffiti defaced a geometry-themed mural on the front wall of the Jimmie Simpson Recreational Centre in the nearby South Central district of the city.

The tagger/vandal has evidently not yet come forward or been found. Some of the Mahler graffiti has been removed or painted over, according to commenters on Torontoist.

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