CHEERLEADERS (LOSING THE GAME) Norman Rockwell’s Cheerleaders appeared on the cover of satevepost on February 16, 1952. In Cheerleaders, Rockwell captures a scene that could have occurred in any town in the country: the close loss of a home team against visiting rivals. The minute details he includes serve to enforce this narrative: the empty seats and the only partially visible janitor cleaning up the soda bottles and other detritus left behind indicate that the game has recently ended, leaving only the disappointed, frustrated and stunned cheerleaders in the once-packed seats. Like the best of his work, Cheerleaders blends Rockwell’s #classic sense of #humor and an element of gentle #nostalgia with #photographic realism. Encouraged by a younger #generation of illustrators that included Steven Dohanos and John Falter, Rockwell similarly began to use photography to assist in composing his paintings in 1937. He typically started his process by sketching the scene as he imagined it....