This essay sketches out the reasons for Clement Greenberg's influence and the relationship between his reception as a critic and the emergence of art criticism as a "discipline," a phenomenon that corresponds, as Amy Newman observes, with the early history of "Artforum". But it is much more than mere "correspondence." This essay also suggests, without diminishing the integrity of his critical voice, that Greenberg's influence was not due to the superiority of his "eye," his critical intelligence, or the otherwise inherent quality of his art criticism. And perhaps this is the historical irony of Greenberg's reputation. For an art critic who put such considerable weight on the experience and judgment of the art object itself, Greenberg's influence in contemporary artworld discourses is due to the historical vagaries and accidents of psychology, sociology, institutional and professional behavior, and other "messy" forms of cultural politics and human behavior that the critic believed to be irrelevant to art and artwriting. (Contains 29 notes.)