Luxury goods billionaire Bernard Arnault, owner of LVMH, was an unexpectedly early visitor on the vernissage day of Fiac, France’s flagship contemporary art fair, which ends on Sunday. So early, in fact, that a number of dealers exhibiting in the new, high-end “Modern Project” booth lamented that they had missed him altogether, as he had moved on before they had even arrived.

The Project, housed in a grey-walled, custom-built booth complete with black-suited security guards and velvet ropes to restrict visitors, has proved the runaway success of the fair. In it are just 24 works of art – but all very costly – from a 1935-43 Mondrian, “Composition in Blue, Red and Yellow” ($35m) from the transatlantic group of paintings that he started in London and finished later in New York to a Calder “stabile” at $6m. Other works include a Warhol “Car Crash” from 1963 and a Picasso portrait of Marie-Thérèse from 1934, all being exhibited by a group of 10 dealers, including L&M Arts, Gagosian and Daniel Malingue. Next month, some of the show will form part of the Abu Dhabi Art cultural platform.

The Modern Project adds another dimension to Fiac, which has been gaining in reputation for the past three years on the back of a strong but discreet group of French and European collectors. “There is less glamour, less of a celebrity culture than in London, but some of the sales here are staggering in size,” says Paris and Salzburg dealer Thaddaeus Ropac. “The French collect much more than people think.”

Over in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre, which hosts Fiac’s section for younger galleries, London’s Hotel Gallery has been celebrating winning the Prix Lafayette for a show of sculptures by Carol Bove. The works, mounted coral and driftwood, sold for $50,000 to Guillaume Houzé of the Lafayette family, for the department store’s collection.

Coinciding with Fiac, the French art data site Artprice has published its annual report on the market for contemporary art. Taking auction results for artists born after 1945 – so excluding Andy Warhol – the report sheds an interesting light on the growing importance of east Asia. If you total up auction sales in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Japan over the past year, the figure outstrips the US for the first time – €130m v €123m. Artprice also points out that one of the great strengths of Asia – and China in particular – is its support for young artists. Young Chinese artists dominate the top 50 first-time auction results, with 23 names – far ahead of the US (six) or the UK (three). And these auction debutants are selling for big money – the first eight all topped €100,000 at auction, and four of them are Chinese (Jindong You, Liaming Wan, Ding Shan and Shanqing Jian).

Artprice also computes the top-grossing artists over the past year. Inevitably, Damien Hirst is in the number-one slot, with more than €134.7m in sales at auction, followed by Jean-Michel Basquiat (€33.7m), Richard Prince (€24.3m) and Jeff Koons (€23m).

Sunday sees the unveiling of Charles Saatchi’s new exhibition Newspeak: British Art Now in St Petersburg. The show is being premiered in Russia before coming to London next summer, and is Saatchi’s second show in the State Hermitage Museum. Newspeak has been installed in the vast Nikolaevsky Hall inside the Winter Palace, and further frothing it up is School of Saatchi, a four-part reality show for discovering young talent to be aired on BBC2 next month. The selected artist’s work will be hung in the Hermitage but his or her name will not be revealed until after the programme’s climax. And, for once, Saatchi has agreed not to acquire any pieces from the programme.

Meanwhile, his coffers have been boosted by the successful sale of two paintings by Martin Kippenberger, which he consigned to Christie’s contemporary art auction during Frieze week in London. Kippenberger’s large-scale rendering of his favourite Berlin haunt, “Paris Bar” (1991), made £2.28m; while a blue-hued painting of one of his characteristic “streetlamps for drunks”, “Kellner Des ... ” (“Waiter Of ... ”, 1991), fetched £1.1m, a nice return on the £196,000 Saatchi paid for it in 2003.

Auction results for traditional Chinese art have been buoyant in Hong Kong this month, with mainland Chinese buyers snapping up the jades, porcelains and works of art on offer to the tune of HK$496.4m (US$62.4m) as part of a series of sales that totalled HK$1.3bn (US$166m). “No recession in Chinese art,” chorused dealers, as works such as a Qing dynasty (18th century) carved throne made HK$76m (US$11m).

Now the Chinese art circus is coming into London for Asia Week, starting next weekend with a series of auctions, lectures and exhibitions. “There is plenty of new money and many new buyers in this field,” says Asia Week chairman Roger Keverne. “Once you knew 70 per cent of the buyers at auction – now it’s about 40 per cent to 60 per cent. Prices are totally stable and, if anything, going upwards, particularly for high-quality works, whatever the medium. Replacing stock is very tough now.” During the week he is showing a charming painted figure of an ox, from the Tang dynasty (618–906), priced at £20,000, as well as a collection of bronze mirrors spanning the 5th century BC to the 10th century AD.

Meanwhile in Paris, a sale of ancient Asian sculpture did remarkably well at the Drouot saleroom last Sunday. Organised by a small auction house, Enchères Rive Gauche, the sale featured 91 pieces from the Verité collection, a group started in the 1920s by the Verité family. It included Japanese, Afghan, Tibetan and Thai sacred statuary, and the sale totaled over €3.9m. However, a question mark still hangs over the top lot, a 10th-century Khmer bronze showing the goddess Shiva, which almost doubled its high estimate, making €739,352. This was the only piece in the sale that had not been granted an export certificate – and it was pre-empted by the Guimet museum of Asian art in Paris. Under this system, the French state substitutes itself for the last bidder, and can claim the prize – as long as it pays within two weeks. Now Guimet has to come up with the money – otherwise the piece will be allowed out of France, and will go to the original bidder, an unidentified British buyer.

Georgina Adam is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper

The Ghosts of Versailles, Wexford Opera House, Ireland
Watteau, Music and Theater/Rococo and Revolution/Watteau to Degas, New York
The Museum of Everything, London