For 15 months from 1929 to 1930 the French philospher and erotic novelist Georges Bataille masterminded the production of the journal Documents in collaboration with a team of prominent writers, poets and scholars. Based in Paris, the publication was conceived as 'a war machine against received ideas' and covered a diverse range of subject matter from art and film to ethnography and popular music. Bataille's intention was to create a counter-weight to the established surrealist movement; a group that would run in parallel to it and take a sideswipe as it did so. The exhibition entitled Undercover Surrealism currently showing at The Hayward Gallery in London brings the pages of Documents to life by assembling, in physical form, much of what was written about over that period. Objects, images and sounds that featured together in print over 75 years ago are now reunited in the flesh in a show that has been almost 30 years in the making.

From the very start the viewer is confronted with the kind of dramatic juxtaposition for which the journal has become renowned. A projection of Buster Keaton in Hollywood Revue plays out opposite a Picasso canvas (The Three Dancers) hanging alongside a collection of ritual objects from 18th century Nigeria. Placed together like this these pieces vibrate strongly against each other and we are forced to look at them in a way that their usual contexts would not. There is a kind of democratisation of the artefacts here that rips through the conventions of display embedded in the gallery/museum world of The West. We are accustomed to having our various cultural objects neatly contained within very different kinds of institutions, but here they sit side by side and are all the richer for it. Prominent ethnographers who made contributions to the journal were determined in their opposition to the fashionable taste for the primitive exotic and this sentiment resonates strongly when standing among these objects in the gallery space.

This attempt to deconstruct cultural boundaries is a constant theme throughout Documents and, by extension, throughout the exhibition. On one level it seems that Bataille was striving to put the art world 'in its place' so to speak. To make it aware that it had created its own pedestal from which it could very easily fall. In edition 8 of the journal, in reference to Picasso, he writes: 'I challenge any art lover to love a canvas as much as a fetishist loves a shoe.' Whether or not Bataille genuinely believed in this statement it is clear that his intentions were at the very least to provoke some kind of reaction from the art establishment.

It is the base aspects of humanity - sex, crime, violence and death - which dominated much of Bataille's thinking. Among the most striking and unusual visuals in this show is a large black and white photograph of a big toe, a part of the body that he described as being the most human and 'a phenomenon of base seduction'. This was one of three similar images that accompanied an essay in the sixth edition of Documents in which Bataille goes on to acknowledge that this part of our anatomy is also shameful and ugly: 'Though the most noble of animals (man) nevertheless has corns on his feet.' Despite our best efforts to refine ourselves through our behaviour and our cultural output we remain at the core basic and crude.

Bataille further explores ideas of the rudimentary impulse in relation to creativity in his essay 'Primitive Art' which is brought to life in this exhibition through a grouping which includes canvases by Joan Miro, examples of prehistoric art, sketches by Picasso and a series of drawings by Bataille himself. As a starting point he uses a drawing of a giraffe by André Masson's nine-year-old daughter Lili to make a link between the joyful and expressive marks made in youth and those made by humans many centuries ago before the 'art world' existed. There is a rawness in both which bring us closer to our origins than perhaps a highly crafted Dali might. Again it seems that what really concerns Bataille is the purity of human expression which is rooted in a very deep and spiritual part of our being. There is a sense throughout this exhibition that he felt that the mainstream surrealists, led by Andre Breton, worked in a way that was contrived and self-conscious and this fascination with more basic forms of expression appears to be a direct response to that.

In the early 1920s Bataille lived in Madrid where he fell in love with bullfighting and it is unsurprising that violence and death feature prominently throughout Documents. Paintings by Andre Masson depicting animal sacrifice hang next to photographs by Eli Lotar of Paris slaughterhouses. Masson's work stands as a metaphor for the massive human sacrifices made during the First World War, yet in an age when we are now used to viewing actual animal carcasses in a gallery these feel rather tame in comparison. The black and white prints have more impact, depicting severed cows heads and piles of intestines on the abattoir floor. It was intended that these images would confront the reader with the reality of the executions carried out on their behalf; a reality that Bataille felt was repressed by society and as good as forgotten.

As a self-proclaimed 'enemy from within' Bataille was compelled to challenge the status quo of the culture of his time. Whether or not people agree with his opinions, and he was undoubtedly controversial, it is difficult to contest the brilliant way in which he brought so many diverse disciplines together creating a unique dynamic in the process. Undercover Surrealism provides the viewer with a window into a fascinating period of twentieth century thought as well as a portrait of an intriguing individual.