Art Taipei — Asia's oldest art fair — wrapped up in its time-honored fashion Monday night, with a flurry of last-minute deals that left many of the 124 participant galleries smiling. Grinning most broadly were the local gallerists, whose long-established relationships with Taiwan's coveted collectors gave them the inside track.

Despite challenges from Southeast Asia and the Chinese mainland, Taiwan's  collectors continue to be the region's art-market leaders, not just by value, but in the depth and breadth of their collecting. Having supplanted the Japanese 20 years ago as the big Asian collectors of Western art, their canny choices are also behind the success of many Asian contemporary and modern artists as well.

Prestigious local gallery Eslite demonstrated the strength of the local market for Asian contemporary by clocking up over US $1.5 million in sales of work ranging from hometown favorites like Suling Wang and Michael Lin to Chinese mainland contemporary stars Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhan Wang, while fellow Taipei-based players like Tina Keng Gallery and Asia Art Center also did impressive business. Aside from the home team, most comfortable at the fair were the Japanese galleries, which made up the second largest national grouping at Art Taipei.

Meanwhile some of the more interesting business being done at the fair was by a small posse of Western dealers — James Cohan, Pascal de Sarthe, and Edouard Malingue — who have all set up shop in Hong Kong or China in recent times. These three all came to Asia as specialists in Western modern or contemporary, which guaranteed that Taiwan would loom large on their agenda.

Each member of this Western trio mixed up their slate in exciting ways to do solid business during the fair. Pascal de Sarthe sold six prints from David LaChapelle's 2010 "Bruce Lee" series (which go for $70,000–90,000), while also securing deals on major works by Chinese modern masters Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-Ki (ranging  from $900,000 to $5.5 million). At fair's end he was also deep in negotiation on two small sculptures by Bernar Venet. Meanwhile Edouard Malinge also sold two  fine Chu Teh-Chun canvases from the 1960s (in the range of $500,000 each) to a mainland collector, while at the same time brokering a deal with a Taiwan collector on a beautiful abstract by Scottish painter Callum Innes (somewhere in the  neighborhood of £20,000). All three Westerners are already signed up for next year's fair.

Interestingly, it was Chinese-owned contemporary art galleries from the mainland who seemed to be least at ease in Taipei. A notable exception was Beijing's Platform China, a relative veteran of the scene after two previous outings at the emerging art fair, Young Art Taipei. They scored solid sales with an affordable and accessible selection of mainland painters. As ARTINFO reported earlier their opening night sales were to collectors from outside Taiwan, but on the  final day they closed a series of deals with Taiwan collectors.

Art Taipei's 45,000 visitors and 124 exhibitors easily won this year's runner-up award for Asia's biggest art fair. (First prize, of course, goes to the Art Basel-owned Art Hong Kong.) Taipei has bested other contenders such as Art Stage Singapore and Art Beijing, and judging by its list of exhibitors it will be untroubled by next week's ShContemporary in Shanghai. Nonetheless Taipei is still a largely regional affair, particularly by comparison to Art Hong Kong and, indeed, Art Stage Singapore, which debuted in January this year.

Wrapping up this year's event, ARTINFO China brings you a quick look at the Best and Worst of this year's Art Taipei:

BEST: Taiwan's collectors. These people have money and they know how to use it. They've done their homework on Western modern and contemporary art for 20 years, while nurturing the local market for Chinese modern masters like Zao Wou-ki and Chu Teh-Chun. They're unafraid of the contemporary market, readily picking up LaChapelles and Murakamis to go with their Picassos and Chagalls. They develop  loyal relationships with their dealers and respect the artists.

WORST: Taiwan's collectors. Experts in the art of the deal, they expect major discounts (routinely starting negotiations at 50 percent, and often securing 30) and won't be rushed. They like to dress down, which makes it hard for the uninitiated to spot them, and hooking them takes time.

BEST: The fair's laid-back pace which had many visiting collectors — and gallerists — singing Taipei's praises and allowed room for genuine discussion about art, as opposed to frantic retail therapy.

WORST: The fair's laid-back pace which had many non-Taiwan gallerists climbing the walls by the final day as they sweated on collectors' decisions (and thwarted the instant analysers among the media too).

BEST: The new media section which brought to the fair a range of engaging, meditative, and thought-provoking work not just from Asia but from around the world. Standout participants included [DAM]Berlin from Berlin, Kodama Gallery from Tokyo, and local outfit Chi-Wen Gallery. The latter showed mesmerizing recent work by Jawshing Arthur Liou, including a video tracking across the surface of an oil painting as if it was the open sea. 

WORST: The overwhelmingly local nature of the fair. Despite the quality of the regional participants, the fair still loses something without substantial participation from  galleries from outside Asia.

BEST: The local art scene. Unlike Hong Kong where the art scene is still in its infancy, Taipei has a long history of artists working and creating in the city. Most fascinating are the young artists' collectives like VT Artsalon and Luxury Logico where practitioners band together to create work which is enthusiastically collected both by local and, increasingly, international collectors.

WORST: The absence of labels at the booth of leading Chinese contemporary gallery Boers-Li. A small thing, I know, but guys, if you are showing work by artists wh  are on the whole unknown in Taiwan wouldn't it help to at least tell us their names? Taken apparently for "aesthetic reasons," the decision on labels made visiting the Boers-Li booth a rather alienating experience. Meanwhile the discrete no-red-dots policy was in the ascendancy everywhere.

BEST: Taipei itself. Unlike mainland China, this is a place that doesn't think it is destined to be the center of the world. Living life on the margins gives Taipei a relaxed quality that charms collectors from cities as diverse as New York, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, and Beijing. Taiwan may not be China, but it is home to a deep repository of Chinese culture which is both elegant and accessible.