Has FIAC beaten out Frieze to take second place on the podium of the world's contemporary art fairs, nipping at the heels of the granddaddy of them all, Art Basel? Opening at the Grand Palais on Wednesday to VIPs, the Paris fair saw a long-absent first-hour rush for works — leaving dealers to be somewhere between gobsmacked, elated, and irked by a controversy over early access to the event's crème de la crème.

After London's Frieze Week, galleries continued in trying to defy the global economic quandary, bringing some works that were noticeably pricier than last year's crop and shredding the myth that FIAC is a fair for the below-the-million bracket.

"It was more like Art Basel than FIAC," said the Pace Gallery's Arne Glimcher. "We had sales right off the bat, it was really fascinating. I hadn't anticipated this kind of rush, especially in this economy, where Europe is not in as good shape as America. But I think we have the right artists."

Making its first FIAC appearance since the 1980s, Pace was mobbed, drawing interest with its moss-floored installation of Zhang Huan's immense Buddhist head sculptures resembling artifacts from a long-lost civilization. It was, however, the gallery's French artist Loris Gréaud who was a key attraction; his darkly industrial three-seater cinema — complete with film and projector in gritty stone-like black — was set across from a wall-filling, 24-piece rock study. Michal Rovner's projections on stone of little figures walking and jumping in place were a deft match. The gallery sold several of the Rovner works, a couple of Sterling Ruby paintings, one Zhang Huan head, and had reserves on Gréaud, according to Glimcher.

"FIAC is certainly an enormous cut above Frieze," added the veteran dealer. "I probably shouldn't be saying this, but it's true. Frieze should tighten up and be a little more selective." The comment rang with fresh disappointment: this was Pace's first year testing out the London fair, matching its enhanced presence in that city.

But back to that pang of controversy that had dealers grumbling on the eve of the fair. Attending a charity dinner at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, many jet-setters who flew in for the fair missed the sneak-through of megacollectors François Pinault and Bernard Arnault, who ranged through the aisles even as the works were still being installed. Other collectors, too, had taken early tours, catching dealers unaware.

"They've been collectors of mine for many, many years," Glimcher said ofthe two billionaires. "But it wasn't only them. There were other collectors inside the day before the fair opened. I really object to that — and if I decide not to come back next year, it will be because of that. It's not the specific collectors. You don't let people see something that is unfinished. It completely violates the dignity of what we're all trying to do. It's not fair to the art and it's certainly not fair to the dealers."

"Personally, it doesn't shock me," said Jérôme de Noirmont, of Paris, who had also sold well, but was still holding his star work: Jeff Koons's "Split Rocker (Pink/Blue)," priced at $1.1 million. "People like Pinault and Arnault don't have much time, so they come in the evening," he said. "It's also normal for people from major museums or collections, who buy a large volume of works and have a public presence, to come through early. It's not just about it being a privilege. But I was rather more shocked that the brokers, advisors, and auction house people were there, too. Their status does not justify it."

The snafu looks likely to be an issue, then — but the mood at the fair recovered at the speed of the sales. Paris dealer Emmanuel Perrotin was ebullient as the fair opened Wednesday, pausing with a hint of respectable modesty before pointing in a 360-degree circle at the works that had sold at his open-plan and open-top booth. The main draw was Takashi Murakami's immense four-panel "As the Interdimensional Waves Run Through Me, I Can Distinguish Between the Voices of Angels and Devil," which sold before the fair to a European museum that asked the gallerist not to divulge its name. The price was in the region of €2-3 million ($2.7-4.1 million).

Perrotin also sold Bharti Kher's "Acidic Landscape, Boiling Water" (2011) for €135,000 ($186,000) and an oversize string of pearls in murano glass by Jean-Michel Othoniel for €80,000 ($110,000). Sales were also close to closing on two vertical sculptures: Johan Creten's "Why Does Strange Fruit Always Look So Sweet?" and Xavier Veilhan's "La Statue de Tokyo."

"Unfortunately, we won't be able to change our stand much, but it would also be a shame to unmount the works," Perrotin said. "We're really happy." He still found space the next day for Kher's large red-and-black bindis-on-wood diptych "An Eye, A Tooth." At the center of the Perrotin booth, meanwhile, Wim Delvoye's gothically laser-cut "Tour – Brussels" was also still on offer, though the gallery had sold a smaller edition and had interest in the 54-foot-tall version.

Perrotin's space was a bold show of works that would need sizable, high-ceilinged rooms — or a spiral staircase in the case of the Delvoye piece, the dealer helpfully suggested, noting that its floor-level diameter was remarkably small for such a large work. "You have to believe in it," said the dealer.

Traditional favorites paid off. Works by Damien Hirst were back at the fair, led by the MDF-cabinet-with-fish "Where Will It End?" (1993) at White Cube, which sold for $2.8 million to a European collector. At Gagosian, a double medicine cabinet was more affordable at $1.75 million. Also on offer there, in a display made to look like home: Picasso's late "Musketeer," at $6-8 million.

After his wildly popular "Leviathan" installation at Monumenta, similar womb-like works by Anish Kapoor were seen in burgundy at Kamel Mennour, green at Galeria Continua, purple at Kukje/Tina Kim, and red at Lisson — which seems to have color-coordinated its seemingly bottomless reverse circular cones. Mennour's was offered for €550,000 ($865,000), Continua was selling theirs for €650,000 ($894,000). Neither had found takers by Thursday afternoon.

At Karsten Greve, the younger artists sold like hotcakes. All of Georgia Russell's entrancing scalpel carvings of seascapes — and creations of wildly bushy books — were snatched up, fetching prices between €6,000 and €20,000 ($8,300-27,500). The gallery also sold a large Louise Bourgeois edition at €270,000 ($370,000). Another work went for €1 million ($1.4 million), and while representatives declined to say which one, the process of elimination suggests it was Cy Twombly's sizable "Untitled (Gaeta)" from 2004.

At Yvon Lambert, a flustered Olivier Belot wasn't calling a sold-out stand for his gallery just yet, but it seemed close. A wonderful architectural landscape in geometric wood by the Prix Marcel Duchamp-nominated Mircea Cantor — with a wind-chime that instantly soothed the lurking stress of FIAC's corridors — was sold (but happily still on view) for €60,000 ($82,500). The Bill Viola video "The Lovers" (2005) — showing sensual but opposed dancers — had also sold for €325,000 ($447,000). Loris Gréaud got a second firm outing here, with works selling between €45,000 ($62,000) and €85,000 ($117,000).

Last year, David Zwirner scored an iconic success with Adel Abdessemed's weighty cube of taxidermied animals, sold to François Pinault. This year, he has given more than half of his booth to Dan Flavin and the trio of red-white-and-blue fluorescent sculptures "Untitled (To the Citizens of the Republic of France on the 200th Anniversary of Their Revolution)." The set has only been seen once before, at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1989.

Not merely an event-appropriate reference to the patriotic French "tricolore," the presentation was also a subtly timed kickstart for the gallery's pushback against controversial European Union regulation. Lastyear the European Commission declared that for tax purposes, Flavin's works are not art but mere "light fittings," and therefore subject first to a five percent import duty, then to the standard value-added tax on sale — a hike to some 20 percent from the five percent usually levied on artworks inEurope. The gallery has retained Brussels law firm Mayer Brown to explore a challenge to the decision.

"Everyone is talking about how terrible it was — but we're taking a stand," said the gallery's Julia Joern. "Hopefully other people will join in. It's one thing to have a petition that everyone signs but it doesn't have any legal ramifications." The gallery had interest from many sides for the Flavin works, both as individual pieces and a three-part ensemble, and was expecting to sell at $1.5 million total. It had also sold a John McCracken mirror sculpture and a Flavin drawing.

Elsewhere, Berlin's Contemporary Fine Arts sold two colorful Marcel Eichner paintings at 18,500 and 19,500 ($25,500 and $26,800). London's Simon Lee sped ahead with sales of a Michelangelo Pistoletto self-portrait-mirror at €180,000 ($247,000) and a 2011 George Condo painting for $275,000 dollars. Xavier Hufkens, of Brussels, took a reserve on his booth's signature work, a gigantic Thomas Houseago spoon, for €250,000($344,000).

The business, it was agreed, suggested that FIAC — now in its 38th edition — has really only come back to life recently. "I suppose it takes a few years to get it there," said Pauline Daly at Sadie Coles HQ of the market activity. A large carpet by Rudolph Stingel, part of an installation that covered the ground floor of the Mies van der Rohe building at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, tied the stand together. Early on in the fair, the gallery had sold works by Jim Lambie, Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin, and Wilhelm Sasnal — mostly drawings. Sarah Lucas's "Panoramadrama" (2011), a set of ceramic toilets on concrete blocks, linked by a sculpture resembling a human intestine, was a harder sell. "She's a genius," was the appraisal at the stand.

Paris gallerist Fabienne Leclerc was proud of her stand, easily the most ingenious of the fair — but scratched her head at collectors' hesitation to embrace Mark Dion, whose wood cabin "The Dark Museum" almost entirely took up Leclerc's booth. Assembled inside the fair and filled with artful curiosity cabinets, the work was priced at €330,000 ($454,000).

"Mark Dion is a very well-known artist, who is in many museums and important international collections — but there are really big French collectors who still don't know who he is," said Leclerc. "Today, unfortunately, the biggest collectors have advisers of a certain generation. They're also very specialized so they may bypass artists whoare truly important." But as a gallery, she added, "it is our duty to take risks. It feels like an injustice when the works that sell are zero risk, works that you will certainly see at auction within a few years. That's everything that doesn't interest me."

FIAC arrived at the Grand Palais only this year, and abandoning the Louvre's Cour Carrée has cost some space, offset only in part by the opening of newly renovated exhibition galleries along the monumental building's southern flank. Dealers were asked to take cuts, with the largest stand shrinking from 90 to 80 square meters — while the price per square meter has gone up from 385 to 465 euros. The shrinking was barely noticeable among the center-aisle stands, but the corners felt slightly cramped — and the much-vaunted new exhibition galleries were positively stuffy. Some galleries chose to anchor around larger pieces, but many crammed their space with smaller works, mainly drawings and video art.

Paris's Loevenbruck was drawing admirers with a crumbled car chassis by Dewar & Gicquel — but in a separate enclosure, the gallery was hoping to sell Alina Szapocznikow's tragi-surrealistworks, piggybacking on the late artist's upcoming museum shows in the United States. "When people come to buy known names, like a Christopher Wool, they have prepared themselves," said Hervé Loevenbruck."With Alina, they take a hit and it stuns them." Sales of some Szapocznikow works were proceeding, he added, but there were "still people who say they will go get a glass of water and come back in two hours."

The overlap between FIAC and Frieze was larger than ever, thanks to the renewed double-commitments of the major London galleries. Last year, FIAC director Jennifer Flay had suggested a tie game between the two fairs. This may now have changed.