LARS MULLBACK

The fairy tale of the twentieth century

Born with severe cerebral palsy, he was meant for the waist, the dark side of society. But last century’s dream of human rights for everyone gave him the opportunity to have a rich, creative life.

He’s constantly moving, sitting on his hands to prevent the arms flying away. He has the canvas on the floor and paints the most powerful paintings with his feet.

I want to inspire, with my life and artwork, Lars Mullback says, when MOOD The Art of Today met him at his fantastic country house in southern Sweden, overlooking a lake and a large forest. On the walls are his own paints and over 20 diplomas, awards from all over the world for his cultural efforts.

I have never felt disabled, he says suddenly. I have always compared myself and been compared with anyone, but I know of course, if I had been born some years earlier, I could have been raised in a stable, like the animal the disabled were seen as.

But I belong to the contemporary world and was one of the first generation of disabled people to get an opportunity of a higher education.

After seven years academic study he become a celebrated film director.

I have made feature films and theatre plays but my most important film is about myself, with me and with me as director, of course, says Lars Mullback, laughing.

The film YES, YOU CAN won the award as the best TV documentary of 1996 at the Berlin Film Festival.

It really changed my life… But strangely enough it destroyed my career.

The western view of cerebral palsy is that it is medically incurable. That made me accept I couldn’t eat or dress myself. But the film was about Conductive Education, a paedagogical view of cerebral palsy. I trained and filmed myself for six months and at 34 years old, I learned to eat by myself, I learned to dress myself. Yes, I was surprised that I could.

The day after the film was broadcast on primetime TV, the Swedish authorities decided to ban Conductive Education.

Why?

It is easier to let the disabled stay disabled than to change the healthcare system, Lars Mullback says, and adds, I couldn’t accept that, of course.

He started to work politically, changed the law, and started his own training centre.

Thousands have got help for an easier life, but I lost my position in the Swedish cultural elite. Nobody dares to work with someone who challenges and accuses the system. So, the TV and film companies stopped buying my ideas.

But it was worth it, Lars says and smiles.

Mood asks if he is happy, he looks down, before his face shines again.

My work to change the Swedish healthcare system has forced me to become an entrepreneur, that everyday administrative work has turned me grey over the last 20 years. But since 2018 I have started to paint. To get back to the creative life and the world of culture. That has given me back my real happiness and the rich colour of life.

I realise I am a very privileged man. But I am also a self-made man. No-one in my family is in the culture world. I haven’t inherited any money. I have just used the opportunities life has given me. Being lucky to live in a historic time, when it was all about human rights and equality.

Unfortunately, this basic idea is declining in our time. The main thing for people in the privileged world nowadays seems to be self-realisation. But I think self-realization comes with a bitter taste if it depends on other people’s misfortune. I really hate the walls, real and imaginary, which are built to prevent people from changing their lives, as you can see in my paintings ‘I Have a Dream’ or ‘Our Proud History’.

Is your artistic work a continuation of your fight to make the world a better place?

No, answers Lars Mullback quickly, I think the world is good enough, at least for me. I’m happily married, and we have a daughter. I hope that can be seen in my art, too. Birds, bright colours, and nature represent to me happiness and the beauty what makes the world worth living in. Not the fight for justice and for the less fortunate. That fight is something we just must do for our conscience, because we are humans. The art, our culture, makes life worth living.