Visitors to Covent Garden, London, in the next month can stand right at the heart of art. French artist Charles Petillon has filled the South Hall with 100,000 balloons, in a work named ‘Heartbeat’, as reported in the Daily Mail:

Petillon, a visual artist, has until now only exhibited photographs of his ‘Invasion’ series of works, all of which involve balloons, as showcased on his website at http://www.charlespetillon.com/.

He has said of his art that he is creating metaphors, and his goal is ‘to change the way in which we see the things we live alongside each day without really noticing them’. With ‘Heartbeat’ he is representing the Covent Garden market as the beating heart of the area. He explained:

Each balloon has its own dimensions and yet is part of a giant but fragile composition that creates a floating cloud above the energy of the market below. This fragility is represented by contrasting materials and also the whiteness of the balloons that move and pulse appearing as alive and vibrant as the area itself.

I was struck by three facets of this art: its striking visual impact; its romanticism; and – most of all – its surrealism.

Surrealism is at the very crux of my new book, Masquerade. First there is the obvious and concrete: the heroine, Luz, has been commissioned to write a biography of a famous Spanish surrealist artist, and so she must immerse herself in that world of art, exploring fantastical buildings and paintings, and trying to put herself in the mind-set of her creator.

But beyond the obvious connection to Surrealism, Masquerade is, at heart, an embodiment of the very spirit of the movement: exploring the boundary between illusion and reality, and breaking it down.

It was André Breton who fathered Surrealism in 1924 when he published his Manifesto of Surrealism. Inspired by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious, he advocated a new movement that would ‘resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality’. ‘The imaginary is what tends to become real,’ he said.

The Surrealists often used irrational, illogical imagery to explore and express the subconscious. In art, members of the movement included Max Ernst, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. I wrote about Dalí last week; his take on Surrealism particularly influenced my writing in Masquerade. ‘Surrealism is destructive,’ he said, ‘but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.’

A perfect example is The Treachery of Images, a painting by René Magritte:

The picture is of a pipe, but the picture itself is not a pipe – it is an image of a pipe. Hence below Magritte painted, ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ – ‘This is not a pipe’. Magritte said of the work: ‘It’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I’d have been lying!’

An important element of many Surrealism artworks is juxtaposition – jarring contrast. This carries forth in Masquerade, in which Luz is torn between two men who have similar appearances but very different backgrounds, motivations and miens. The contrast is frequently disturbing to her, dizzying, just as the surveyor of any Surrealist work feels.

Another key facet of Surrealism is sexuality. As Luz asserts in the book, ‘Repressed sexual desire was the obsession of all the Surrealists in some form or other.’ Masquerade is set in 1976, the year after the dictator Franco died, and Spain is on the cusp of massive social change. Until now, for example, women had been expected to adhere to a strong moral code that set high standards for their sexual conduct, and prohibited divorce and contraception. Now, Luz’s generation will be released from the cage, but years of repression are hard to shake off. Still, the Surrealist preoccupation with simmering, concealed sexuality is apparent.

Ultimately, a single word echoes in my mind – and in my book – in relation to Surrealism: liberation. The movement was fundamentally about liberating the mind, through exposure of psychological truth. And that exposure is what drives the plot of Masquerade, all the way through to its explosive climax.