Art and aristocracy

While I was making more "little square books" from various old art magazines, an article in a 1991 issue of Crafts magazine caught my eye. It's written by Peter Dormer about ceramicist/sculptor Michael Flynn, whose work I've come to appreciate over the years. Dormer says:

"Flynn is not an eccentric but he is a complex man - a sculptor, a ceramist, an Irishman, a lover of words, a reader of serious European novels and an explorer of myth and legend. He takes art very seriously - and indeed has sacrificed much for it - he has put his money, and perhaps, at times, his family and house on the line in order to study and work. In some ways he is aristocratic. He does what he feels he has to do, not what other people think he ought to do. He is naturally, not deliberately, at odds with conventional middle-class life. This is rare, especially in contemporary craft and art where the practitioners might pose as dotty individualists but are really middle class to the very core of their mortgage commitments."

Artist as complex person - that rather goes without saying; but artist as aristocrat - ? Both terms are so heavily loaded ... something to ponder.