“…19 Since spontaneous perception can take the disenchanted form of vision that is the source of the modern scientific outlook, Larsen concludes that "there is no pure perceptual world that a scientistic metaphysics comes to colonize, that the world of perception in modernity always already is the scientific world". 20 It is not possible, then, to maintain a distinction between spontaneous vision and scientific construction, a distinction, moreover, upon which Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological project and view of painting rest. This is a provocative conclusion, yet the entire argument turns on the way Larsen understands Merleau-Ponty's assertion that "perception already stylizes".…”