A select crowd of VIPs bearing plastic "Invite d'honneur" cards invaded the glorious Art Nouveau-styled and glass-roofed Grand Palaison Wednesday to sample the rich mix of wares displayed by just 114 modern and contemporary art dealers appearing in FIAC's 37th edition. Sunlight poured in through the vast expanse of glass overhead, offering picture-postcard views of Paris's famed blue skies.

The fair's organizers, headed by Jennifer Flay, smartly got rid of the temporary mezzanine section this year, eliminating some of the visual clutter and ramping up the exclusive feel of the easily navigable layout. The new look seemed to delight visitors, as evidenced by New York collector Hubert Neumann, who was in for the opening of his exhibition in the Marais at the Galerie Richard, "The Incomplete-Paris — Artists from the Neumann Family Collection." This year's fair, he said, "is an incredible improvement, and light years ahead of what FIAC used to be."

Moments later, Miami contemporary art magnate Don Rubell sounded equally intoxicated by the optimistic mood, saying. "It's a major step up, and it gets the most-improved art fair award," said the collector. "Just look at this environment. It's phenomenal!"

Several anonymous observers contrasted the buzz here with the relativelylow level of excitement at London's eight-year-old Frieze Art Fair,which closed on Sunday. "When you hear the best thing about a fair was the lecture program, you know it's got to be in trouble," said one private dealer.

But no one seemed to be complaining about FIAC or the clobbering array of outside exhibitions, ranging from the deluxe debut of Cy Twomblypaintings at Gagosian's sky-lit new space on 4 Rue de Ponthieu —around the corner from Christie's posh quarters — which has struck the gallery's Paris neighbors with a terror that might have greeted the guillotine in another era.

Gagosian is also a first-time exhibitor at FIAC, with an elegant exhibition titled "Women." In typical fashion, wall labels and other such useful information are absent from the display, which includes works that range from a 1943 Picasso painting to a new large-scale charcoal drawing by Jenny Saville to Richard Prince's "Leave itto Nurse Kathy."

There was also the ambitious debut of the decidedly cutting-edgy RosenblumCollection, assembled in the past five years by Parisians Steve and Chiara Rosenblum and impressively displayedin a fomer photography laboratory in the far-off 13th arrondissement that has been transformed by architect Joseph Dirand.

Their opening exhibition, the politically charged "Born in Dystopia," isopen to the public by appointment and is highlighted by an enormous Matthew Day Jackson installation centered around avintage 1950s bomb shelter. Like other works in the Rosenblum collection, including paintings by the Iraqi–born and YaleeducatedAhmed Alsoudani, the art on view seems to have rocket-propelled market power, as if an edition of Charles Saatchi'sdousing rod for new talent had made its way into the possession of the adventurous couple.

For instance, the first Alsoudani to be sold at auction, an untitled 2007 painting, made £289,250 ($463,378) last week at Sotheby's London. When Alsoudani paintings from that year were offered and sold byRobert Goff at the Dubai Art Fair in 2008, they ranged in price from $45,000 to $65,000. Saatchi, who was the seller at Sotheby's, acquired the work around 2007 for about $20,000, according to a source familiar with the artist's market.

As the Rosenblums rounded a corner during a late-morning grand tour of FIAC, they were rushed by a gaggle of admirers, as if they were art world royalty.

Meanwhile, commerce lit up like a Roman candle. At the multinational Hauser& Wirth gallery, rising market star Matthew Day Jackson had more of his obsessively detailed works inspired by the Cold War, the space race, theatomic bomb, and other flashpoints of recent American history on display. They quickly sold. Jackson's lineup of sculpted skulls on a stainless steel shelf, "The Way We Were," a 2010 edition of three executed in titanium, aluminum, steel, iron, bronze, lead, and copper, sold out at $130,000 each. Another 2010 piece, "Golem," a life-size figure in found wood, plastic, and detritus from the recent Gulf oil spill, sold for $150,000.Jackson's vision of the aftermath of the Hiroshima atomic-bomb attack, "August 6, 1945," in scorched, found, and painted wood, also sold, for $125,000. Another unique Jackson, this one inspired by a Life magazine cover, "August 8, 1969," celebrating the exploits of moon-walker Neil Armstrong in gypsum plaster and found, painted, and scorched wood, sold for $120,000.

Jackson, a recent addition to Hauser & Wirth, had his pick of exhibition standmates, according to the gallery’s associate director Frederic Larroque.  Of those, Paul McCarthy's 2009 bronze pirate "Shit Face Fucked Up," part of an edition of two plus one artist proof, saw two from its edition sell at $750,000 apiece.

Even some of the veteran exhibitors, such as Salzburg and Paris gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac, were pleasurably shocked by the voraciousness of early sales, though he was worried about the complexityof rehanging the stand, given the draconian rules and absence of easilyavailable French labor. The streets outside the Grand Palais were filled with protests over job security and pensions, creating havoc in the French capital and inconveniences for some Paris visitors.

That said, the French were not at all restrictive about the number of influential advisors and collectors who were granted access to FIAC a day early to cherry-pick material, according to one source. Such shenanigans are no longer possible at Frieze or the Basel art fairs, where such behavior would result in the banishment of any participating dealer.

"This is a bit unexpected," said Ropac, two hours into the opening, “We've sold 20 things so far." Of those, Jack Pierson's found advertising-sign-letter piece in metal, wood, plastic, and paint, "Golden Years" (2010), sold for $150,000,and Robert Longo's roughly eight-by-six-foot untitled charcoal-on-mounted-paper depiction of a veiled woman, dated 2010, sold for $80,000. Two new paintings by Georg Baselitz also sold, "Glaube Versetzt Berge" and "Kein Schatten, Aber Coellinblau," for €430,000 ($602,000) and €400,000 ($560,000) respectively, and a prickly stainless-steel bar sculpture by Antony Gormley, "Quantum Void V," sold for £260,000 ($410,000). A 2010 floral and fruit still life by Mark Quinn, "Elementary Particles," sold for £125,000 ($197,000) as well.

"Strangely, I'm not that surprised," Ropac said, regaining his composure after the initial shock. "We brought some very strong pieces and somehow we felt the energy in the air."

One of the largest works on view, and arguably the most emblematic of FIAC's recharged ambitions, was the behemoth Anish Kapoor, "Slug," at Paris's Galerie Kamel Mennour stand, bearing a bullish £1.8 million ($2.8 million) price tag. Kapoor recently joined Mennour's stable in France, and "Slug" had debuted at the artist's recent retrospective at London's Royal Academy. By early afternoon, the gallery had a reserve on the work but could not confirm the actual sale.

That wasn't the story at New York's David Zwirner Gallery, with its one-person exhibition of sculpture by the Algerian-born Adel Abdessemed, formerly with Mennour. "We've had good sales and made good contacts and have had interesting discussions with curators," gallery owner David Zwirner said three hours into the VIP opening. "I like to use an art fair booth like a gallery." Works sold at prices ranging from $50,000 — for "Go On," a pair of cement boxing gloves from an edition of five, of which four sold — to $280,000, for the artist's 2010 wall-sized installation, "Silent Warriors," comprised of approximately 200 handmade metal masks. "We sold it to a major Swiss collection," said Zwirner.

First-time FIAC presenters Blum & Poe, the noted Los Angeles dealers, appeared pleased by the initial response to their modestly scaled stand, selling Mark Grotjahn's 2010 "Untitled (V over Blue and Pink 41.23)," for $90,000, Florian Maier-Aichen's 2009 "Salton Seas," an 89 ¾-by-116-inch C-print from an edition of six for $100,000, and, for $275,000, "Little Brother," by Zhang Huan (a new member of their roster), an ash-on-linen 2008 painting measuring 78 ¾-by-59-inch.

"We had trimmed out art fair participation down to two fairs," said partner Tim Blum, describing their business decisions during the 2008 market downturn. "Now we're up to six a year. We obviously didn't take a big stand for our first time here, but we will next year."

FIAC opens to the public today and runs through October 24 at the Grand Palais, with 80 additional galleries show work at the Cour Carree du Louvre.