The 43rd edition of Art Basel, the world’s largest modern and contemporary art fair, managed to be an unquestionable success despite taking place at a time when most of the world is suffering from economic jitters. The Swiss fair hosting 300 top-tier international gallery exhibitors wrapped on June 17 with a noticeable increase in buyers from China.

With approximately 65,000 visitors, the same amount as last year, including U.S. billionaires like Stephen Cohen and Jerry Speyer, as well as renowned artists such as Marina Abramović and Richard Wentworth, sales were strong at all levels of the market.

To prevent the stampede that took place last year, event organizers instituted a multi-tiered system of VIPs, which kept the preview days more staid, at once a relief and a bit of a dismay to exhibitors.

Unsurprisingly, a work by Gerhard Richter led sales at Art Basel.  Richter’s monumental 1986 red, blue and yellow abstract “A.B. Courbet” was sold by Pace Gallery of New York with a price tag rumored to be between $20 million and $25 million.  However, Rothko’s “Untitled” from 1954, offered for around $78 million, stood unsold, so far.

Quickly sold was noted New York printmaker Philip Guston's painting "Orders" from 1978, for $6 million. 

Famed French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois' sculpture of an arched figure, created in 1993, sold for $2 million.

One of Paul McCarthy's recent Snow White-themed sculptures sold for $1.8 million; this particular one being a sculpture in black walnut entitled "White Snow and Prince on Horse.” McCarthy also sold a large drawing based on this sculpture for $350,000.

As a nude passive couple flanked the fair’s entrance, reenacting Abramović’s "Imponderabilia," a tape of the original 1974 performance sold for around $225,000

There were many other standouts.  Pace also sold Agnes Martin’s “Untitled,” a 12-inch-square oil, ink, and wash-on-canvas circa 1961 for $1 million, as well as Claes Oldenburg’s bronze and stainless steel “Clothespin” from 1974 for $600,000, and contemporary Chinese symbolist Zhang Xiaogang’s “Face 2012 No.1” went for $450,000. 

At Blum & Poe a two-part painting by Takashi Murakami, “Shangri-La Blue/Shangri-La Pink,” was sold for around $1.5 million. Christopher Wool’s “End Plate II,” an alkyd-on-aluminum and steel from 1986 to a European collector for $950,000. 

The Galerie St. Etienne sold a rare Max Beckmann woodcut of his most notable print, “Group Portrait, Eden bar” from 1923, for somewhere in the low six figures.

The Parisian gallery Lelong sold a marble sculpture by Luciano Fabro for over a million dollars, and Sprüth Magers also found a European buyer for a knitted work from 1986 by Rosemarie Trockel.

Metro Pictures sold two versions of Robert Longo’s fierce “Untitled (Tiger Head No. 9),” both to Europeans for $295,000 apiece.  Cindy Sherman’s new edition, “Untitled” from 2010-2012, sold four out of six for $450,000 each.  Austrian Franz West's giant work "Gekroese" made 2011 and resembling the large intestine, sold on the first day of the fair for a seven-figure sum.