Opposite is Golub’s “White Squad I,” from 1982, in which three mercenaries or soldiers (who are not all white by the way) stand over the prone bodies of a brown-skinned man and woman who seem to have been beaten. All the figures float against a background stained rust-red, evoking heat, violence and blood but also the heroic color fields of Abstract Expressionism. The huge canvas, unstretched, and flat to the wall, has the grandeur of a Renaissance fresco.

Between them, Mr. Schnabel’s vibrant “Hope,” from 1982, conjures a diffuse existential unease grounded in European motifs. A skull, a crucifix and the suggestion of a sorrowing Rubenesque nude press in on a naked man (possibly the artist) who may be leaving them behind. At once absurd and solemn, it is rendered in big splintery brush strokes of gorgeous colors on a patchwork collage of gold and blue velvet (the blue resembles an overheated Titian sky). On view at the Whitney for only the second time in 20 years, this painting is a breathtaking sight.

The second gallery groups together stars, like Mr. Salle, with others, including Joyce Pensato, overlooked until recently, who dallied in the images of popular culture, pulling its meanings in provocative directions. Mr. Salle’s harlequin figures, painted from color reproductions against tones of blue and orange, are splayed across the top half of his “Sextant in Dogtown,” from 1987. Below this elegant mix of old and modern are three inky renderings, indelibly contemporary, based on photographs Mr. Salle took of a seminude woman holding a garment in one instance and a Noguchi lamp in another. The work is an outstanding example of Mr. Salle’s visual sophistication.

In comparison, Kathe Burkhart’s blunt “Prick: From the Liz Taylor Series (Suddenly Last Summer),” from 1987, reprises a movie scene with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in exuberantly trashy paint, vinyl and fake gold leaf. Walter Robinson’s painting “Baron Sinister” (1986) places a heavy-breathing pulp-fiction cover on a demure field of white Rymanesque brushwork, and Peter Cain’s hyper-real “Z” (1989) reduces a gleaming ad-ready image of a car to a phallus on wheels.