The 36th edition of the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC), comprised this year of 198 modern and contemporary galleries and six dedicated to design, held its VIP day on Wednesday in the spectacular Grand Palais. The fair will be open to the public October 22–25.

No other art fair comes close to match the grandeur of the Grand Palais, also the site of the $483.8 million Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Berg auction last February.

The fair added a new section this year, “A Joint Presentation of Modern Masterworks,” also known as “The Modern Project.” The brainchild of leading Paris dealer Daniel Malingue, the chicly designed, segregated section comprises 10 blue-chip galleries each highlighting two or three modern masterworks, ratcheting up the quality of the fair’s offerings and smartly setting it apart from London’s Frieze Art Fair, which ended Sunday.

But the real purpose, according to Malingue, who organized the subsection and is showing in it himself, along with nine colleagues who are new to FIAC, “is to take some good things away from auction.”

“That is my hope,” he said. “To present works just like Christie’s and Sotheby’s do.”

Malingue envisions taking the new enterprise to different dramatic settings every six months, “so a seller will come to me and say, ‘I’d like to put my fabulous Mondrian in your exhibition.” And in fact, his vision is already becoming reality: The government of Abu Dhabi invited the 10 exhibitors to show at next month’s Abu Dhabi Art fair there.

Among the jewels in “The Modern Project” were Pablo Picassos Femme Escrivant (Marie-Therese) (1934), priced in the region of $24 million at Chicago’s Richard Gray Gallery; Constantin Brancusis Madamoiselle Pogany I (1913) in polished bronze with a limestone base, going for in the $35 million range at New York’s L&M Arts; and a stunning untitled Alexander Calder stabile from 1942 in wood, wire, glass, and string, at New York’s PaceWildenstein, priced around $6–8 million.

“We already have reserves on the Sam Francis to a German collector for four million Swiss francs” said Catherine Couturier of Basel’s Galerie Beyeler about Way Then Opened II (1962–63), “and we have a reserve on our Fernand Leger, Le Drapeau from 1919, at six million Swiss francs.”

The elaborate installation generated the main buzz at the fair, with people guessing what Gagosian Gallery might be asking for Andy Warhols Green Disaster (Green Disaster Twice) (1963) or how much Frantisek Kupkas Architecture Philosophique (1914) was going for at Paris’s Galerie Louis Carré.

As for the reception of the new, higher-end section, all early indicators make it a hit. “You’re seeing here potentially the best of the market, and who doesn’t want to see that?” says New York art adviser Sandy Heller. “It’s a brilliant effort to make this fair a permanent stop on the art trail.”

But the Modern section was a kind of fancy sideshow than a main attraction.

The main portion of the fair felt like the Arctic, with people walking around with the collars turned up to the chilly Paris air under the Grand Palais’s glass-and-cast-iron dome, but that didn’t impede trading (or gossip, particularly the news that Paris's Wildenstein Institute, creator of many catalogues raisonné of important Impressionist and modern artists, had forced at least eight researchers to resign and shuttered its Gazette des Beaux Arts).

New York’s Luhring Augustine had dedicated its entire stand to British sculptor Rachel Whiteread, and had almost immediately sold one of her 2009 works, Hive, in cast resin, to a prominent American collector for €215,000.

There was also a frenzy of early transactions at New York’s Skarstedt Gallery, a FIAC newcomer, with two works selling for €1 million: Christopher Wools If You (1992–2005) in enamel on aluminum, and Cindy Shermans color centerfold Untitled #93 (1981).

The gallery also sold Richard Princes early joke painting, A Husband Came Home (1988) for $750,000, as well as several works by Martin Kippenberger, including Geschuetzen Palmen im langweiligen Frankfurt (Monument for Boring Frankfurt) (1985) in oil and stickers on canvas for $450,000 and a group of three bared-chested self-portraits executed in mixed media on hotel stationery, all titled Untitled (Medusa), that depict the late artist as he was dying, for $350,000. All three served as studies for paintings on view at the Paris’s Musée d'Art Moderne in “Deadline,” an exhibition of artists’ last works.

“He’ll be the new Bacon,” Skarstedt said of Kippenberger.

Asked about the atmosphere at the fair, Skarstedt said, “It’s almost like an auction for us, because people have to make up their minds quickly. Collectors are going back to more classical material now.”

The dealer also noted that prices were much cheaper than a year ago, citing the Prince joke painting as a prime example. “It would have been something like $1.2 million last year,” he said, noting, however, that prices had been elevated, and that you had to go back to 2005 to find more realistic price levels.

Other early transactions included Georges Mathieus mural-sized Bataille Japonaise (fond blanc) (1957), formerly in the important German collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs, for approximately €1 million at Paris’s Applicat-Prazan, and, at Paris’s Galerie Daniel Templon, a striking, untitled dark figure painting by the young Bulgarian artist Oda Jaune, a former student of Jörg Immendorff, for €19,000, and two watercolors at €2,700 apiece.

“She’s turning 30 next month, “ said Templon’s Delphine Guillaud.

London’s Simon Lee, who skipped Frieze this year, dedicated his stand to new works on paper by George Condo, and sold in the first few hours of the VIP promenade seven works in acrylic, charcoal, and pastel, including Deconstructed Portrait and Laughing Female Portrait, at prices between $25,000 and $35,000.

“I’m pleased,” said Lee. “And I’d say the mood is cautiously optimistic.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.