©2008–2009 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin

At Emmanuel Perrotin's booth, "The Simple Things," a collaboration between Takashi Murakami and hip-hop star Pharrell Williams, went for $2 million.

Andy Warhol Jake and Dinos Chapman Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Joan Mitchell Henri Matisse Jean-Michel Basquiat Tracey Emin

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Many exhibitors chose less expensive and less ambitious works to try to tempt buyers in the new economic climate.

“It seems like everybody’s brought interesting things,” said New York private dealer Neal Meltzer, caught striding across the booth of New York’s PaceWildenstein Gallery, “but it doesn’t have that sense of urgency.”

Cheim & Read, also of New York, chose a two-person display of drawings, sculpture, and photographs by Jack Pierson and William Eggleston, with Pierson priced between $20,000 and $200,000 and Eggleston between $25,000 and $50,000.

“Before, we brought over a mixed bag of works for millions of dollars,” said gallery co-owner John Cheim, who cited Joan Mitchell and Louise Bourgeois as examples, “but this time we decided to have an idea show. Hopefully, this will appeal to museum curators and directors as well as collectors.”

A number of important American collectors were spotted during the late-morning rush hour, including L.A.’s Eli Broad, Ohio’s Ron Pizzuti, and Connecticut’s Douglas Cramer. There was even a celebrity sighting, with movie star Brad Pitt seen wandering the aisles in a brimmed cap, tinted glasses, and faded blue jeans. And Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich made an appearance as well.

Broad was strolling with his wife, Edythe, and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art chief curator Paul Schimmel. “We’re here to tell everybody about MOCA’s November reopening with ‘Collection: The First 30 Years’ ” said Broad, shoving a brochure in this journalist’s hand.

“We have Eli to thank for the next 30 years,” quipped Schimmel, alluding to the collector’s recent $30 million promised bailout of the troubled, endowment-depleted museum.

Theme-driven booths were plentiful this year, including ones seemingly oblivious to newer price points or recent market contractions. Geneva’s Galerie Jan Krugier & Cie displayed an eclectic homage to gallery founder Jan Krugier, who died last November. Studding the booth were an astonishing array of Alberto Giacometti sculptures, including Woman Standing (1958), which is priced at $7.2 million, as well as a number of Giorgio Morandi still lifes, Jean-Michel Basquiats, and Picassos, among them a late painting priced at $18 million.

“We have an enormous storage room here, with lots of works of art,” said Tzila Krugier, the founder’s daughter, pausing for a moment by a small Henri Matisse bronze dated 1906 and priced at $500,000. “We call it, ‘You name it, we have it.’ ”

Getting more serious, she added, “To me, the spirit of Jan is very important to be felt here.”

Giacometti was in strong evidence at a number of other booths as well, including Gagosian’s, where his work was harbored in a kind of backroom salon that also boasted a beautiful pointillist Picasso canvas, from the 1930s, of a voluptuous seated figure, most likely his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter.

One of the bronze Giacomettis there, a stately head of Diego believed to be priced in the region of $5 million, was sourced from the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris, which has a formal relationship with Gagosian Gallery.

As starstruck fair-goers buzzed around trying to capture Pitt’s presence with cell phone cameras, others made a beeline to the one-artwork-dominated stand of Zurich’s Bruno Bischofberger, a stalwart presence at Basel since the fair was founded in the late 1960s.

The attraction inside the booth’s silver-papered exterior walls was Andy Warhol’s immense, space-hogging Big Retrospective Painting from 1979, which Bischofberger acquired in 1980 along with the artist’s entire series of postmodern works that replicate his previous paintings and series from the 1960s, from flowers and Marilyns to car crashes and Campbell’s Soup cans.